37 Years Ago

37 years ago today, Al and I got married in Bellevue, Nebrasksa.

We had met about 5 years before on the tiny island of Guam.  We had been friends for years and even double dated (with other people) a few times. Our fathers were both in the Air Force and both got stationed at Offutt AFB in Nebraska after leaving Guam.


After living on Guam two years, we got used to tropical weather and both of us hated Nebraska winters. We made the decision to move south once we got married.  Both of our parents lived there, but we were determined to start our lives together in warmer climate.  We got married in June and the following March, we packed up all of our "stuff" and moved to Tampa, Florida.  We had never even been to Florida and just picked Tampa out from a map.  We wanted warm weather and to be close to the water.  We never regretted our decision and loved Tampa.  We became avid scuba divers and did a LOT of diving in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2006, we decided we wanted a change.  We sold our Tampa house and bought our "halfway house" in the country, in south Georgia.  Our intention was to live in Georgia a few years until we were ready to take off in the motorhome and become full time rv'ers.  It's half way between our regular life and our fulltiming life!  Our initial thinking was maybe 5 years in Georgia.  We wanted to own some land, have a garden, live in a rural area with no visible neighbors and get away from the hustle and bustle of a large city.  We also had just come through two very nasty hurricane years in Tampa.  The 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons were the worst we had ever experienced the whole 30 years we lived in Tampa. Those years brought a hurricane a week and we were on constant alert for the next one.  We didn't get hit directly in Tampa, but Hurricane Charlie had been predicted to make landfall directly in the Tampa Bay area. It was very close to making landfall when it suddenly made a southerly turn and hit Port Charlotte causing terrible damage there.

So today, for our anniversary, we aren't really doing much.  We thought about going out for dinner somewhere, but that would involve a drive into Tallahassee and we're not sure we want to bother. Maybe we'll stay around the house.  We got started yesterday working on some repairs on the house and now that we're on a roll, we don't want to lose our momentum!  We are trying to get the house ready to put on the market so that we can start our new life on the road.