Crazy Bill's Travel Blog: The Villages

Many years ago we heard about a place in central Florida called The Villages. The Villages is a retirement community that took the Sun City concept and improved on it. It has several main features one of them being golf. There are golf courses everywhere in the complex and as a member of The Villages you can play unlimited golf free for as long as you live there. It's other thrust is activities. That covers the gamut from Bocci Ball, tennis, painting, line dancing, etc. I guess they even have a ham radio club. In short, if you are retired and don't want to be bored, they are set up to keep you entertained. The Villages is based on the village concept. Each neighborhood is a gated community built around a town square in the middle. The town square has shops, restaurants, and all kinds of personal services such as barbers and beauty salons. Each town square has a movie theatre as well. The principal means of transportation from your home to the town square is by golf cart. There are golf carts everywhere and they run on seperate roads that run alongside the vehicle roads. We had lunch at RJ Gators which is on a medium sized lake. We got to watch the Dragon Boats practicing. The Dragon Boats are long, skinny boats propelled by 22 rowers, 11 on each side. The beat master sits up front and beats on a drum to signal the rowing speed. If you've ever watched the movie Ben Hur you will know what I am talking about. Average age of the rowers is 70 and I guess they compete in meets all over the country. Below is a series of photos we took with captions. The whole thing is very well done and is several magnitudes better than the Sun City developments we have visited. A senior living at The Villages would be very much like a kid living at Disney World. We toured several of the homes and they are very well done. They even brought a smile to the face of my Moral Compass. It will probably take several more visits to complete the sell but my main obstacle will not be The Villages. I need to convince Beth and Janice and Marianne back home to move away and then the path will be clear.