On July 6th, we borrowed Pam's car and drove north about 45 minutes to visit our other Florida family, Bill and Donna Phaneuf. It was a lovely drive with great weather for our Wednesday excursion. Bill and Donna were at Love's Landing, a gated airport housing community where their second home is located and home to Bill's airplane and their new camper, so we met there to start our day. Their home is lovely with southwestern décor that we should have hidden a few things from there in the car to take back to our home here in Lakewood! The setting, house and pool are so Florida and homey comfortable. I loved the street signs in the Loves Landing Community being no more than two feet above the ground as the signs outside the community state as you approach the gates. I guess the private planes really do fly low, another warning sign is posted as one approaches the community!
After talking bunches, catching up somewhat, and enjoying their home and the surroundings, we all headed up the road for about 15 minutes to get to their primary residence, The Villages. It is quite a retirement community spreading out over 32 square miles. The US Census ranked The Villages as the fastest growing U.S. city with 157,000 residents as of April 2016! There are something like 39 golf courses in The Villages. The clubs and associations number well above 500. The entire grounds of The Villages are so well manicured and the trees, shrubbery, flowers and regional plants are all expertly taken care of.
Bill drove us around to take in some of the sights of the grounds before we stopped at Lake Sumter Landing to have a wonderful lunch at the Lighthouse Point Grille.
After lunch, we visited many of The Villages areas and took in too much to write all about everything we saw and did. A Google search at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Villages,_Florida will give a lot of history, information and stats as well as The Villages own site at thevillagesflorida.com.
Nightly activities are held in The Villages three town squares, Lake Sumter Landing's Market Square, Spanish Springs Town Square and Brownwood Paddock Square. We visited each and saw the unique restaurants, shops and businesses for each town square.
To highlight some of what we experienced, here's a few pictures from the day. One of our stops was The Sea Breeze Recreation Center. It is all nautical, seashore and full of that beach feel!
We also visited The Eisenhower Recreation Center which salutes Government, The Presidents, The Military and President Eisenhower. Many pieces have been donated to this center from friends and family of the Eisenhowers. It really is like going to a Presidential or Patriotic Tribute Museum. It was really wonderful to spend time here.
Over at The Brownwood Square we went into the Bridgeport Paddock Sales Office. It was spectacular. It is completely decorated in the western theme that the founders of The Villages loved.
We saw and did much more, but at least these pictures give a feel for The Villages. We ended the day at Bill and Donna's home here at The Villages, or as Donna says, this one is "Donna's house" and the Airport house is "Bill's house"! Again another fabulous Florida home.
We always enjoy meeting up with our special Florida Family when we can catch up and always have fun. Love these guys!
The complete photo album may be seen by clicking this link.
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