Florida - the snowbirds are back!

[greensinestro]

Aw crap....you just reminded me that we'll have more blue-haired idjits on the loose soon! (I'm in Fort Lauderdale, BTW....snowbird capital)

I was actually born in Ft Lauderdale. I live in West Palm Beach, but work in Coral Springs every day, so I know what you are saying.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Hey EQ! I'm in Western NC right now! We had a celebration the moment the Florida license plates started dwindling. And then, they were gone!

...only to be replaced by people coming to see the leaves change...

Forget driving almost 3 hours . . . I'll stay home and watch the leaves change.

I'm in Greensboro, BTW.

[Evil Queen]

My Aunt lives in Greensboro.

I'm sorry Chardonnay. (My aunt is a real bitch)

[Gurndigarn]

I don't think the economy is anything that affects these people. I, like many others, have had to curb travel and other luxuries. Yet, these people are still driving in their shiny, late model expensive cars, living in their second homes that most of us could not afford to have.

Actually, it does. Y'see, the banks are being a lot pickier about who they're giving credit cards to these days, so they're beginning to have this problem called "out of plastic".

Think about it. How often do you get letters from banks begging you to take their credit cards these days? We went from a couple per week per spouse down to one every other week per spouse (Chase bank just isn't getting the clue).

[AnaKhouri]

I live up North, but the snowbirds affect us too.

My bookstore is in a rather ritzy part of town. For the past couple weeks I have had this at least once a day:

Elderly Person: I want to special order a book. But it HAS to be in by CERTAIN DATE because I am leaving for FLORIDA on OTHER DATE and won't be back until DATE IN THE SPRING.

Uh, whatever. I make no promises.

[greensinestro]

Elderly Person: I want to special order a book. But it HAS to be in by CERTAIN DATE because I am leaving for FLORIDA on OTHER DATE and won't be back until DATE IN THE SPRING.

Uh, whatever. I make no promises.

So, buy it in Florida! Oh, I forgot. Things are much better and cheaper where you're from, like you people always say out loud, in public.

[mharbourgirl]

They do that in the Shenandoah Mountains in the Western part of Virginia. Skyline Drive. Yeah ... Like no one's ever seen leaves falling and changing colors before.

Well, actually... I'm from the west coast of Canada. Until I moved to Nova Scotia, fall for me was the odd aspen turning yellow among the fir and cedar, a stray vine maple or two which turned amazing technicolor, and the omnipresent broadleaf maple which just turns brown and diseased-looking.

Moving to Nova Scotia has been quite the experience as far as fall colors go, I gotta say. So at least SOME of those people really never have seen 'autumn leaves' actually worth looking at.

Also, I wanted to apologize for the snowbirds. A large quantity of them, especially in Florida, are elderly Canadians, and we don't want 'em around in the winter either.

My late grandparents used to go to Arizona, because 'Florida just isn't warm enough'.

[wanderingjoe72]

ARRGGHHH!!!! I'm in Arizona and we can't stand them here either. It got so bad we built them their own town so they would leave us alone (Look up Green Valley, AZ).

There has been a ton of construction lately, so I hope that scares some of them off. It actually may draw more since they will have something legit to complain about.

[Kogarashi]

They do that in the Shenandoah Mountains in the Western part of Virginia. Skyline Drive. Yeah ... Like no one's ever seen leaves falling and changing colors before.

My in-laws live in Dallas, TX, where, according to them, the leaves go from green straight to brown. So they like to visit us up here in CT to see the colors on the trees. They do have the sense to have someone used to it (like me) do the driving while they gawk, or at least pull over when they really want to stare at a lovely tree-covered hillside.

Some of my friends from Utah aren't too familiar with it either, since the bulk of the color-change trees are in a narrow line along the mountains.