My dearest friend Jamie was celebrating her 60th birthday.  She invited me and our other sweet friend Michelle to visit her house in The Villages (Orlando, FL).

The Villages span over 30,000 acres across 57 square miles.  There are villages inside villages.  There are many villages with individual town squares that each have dozens of restaurants, shops, and daily entertainment.  

Each village hosts numerous daily activities including pottery, cardio drumming, synchronized swimming, beach tennis, tap dance, square dance, and more.

The Villages features hundreds of pickleball and tennis courts, over 100 swimming pools, and more golf courses than any other community in the world.

Jamie is taking tap dance, watercolor cards, pickleball, Thai chi and cardio drumming.  We loved cardio drumming!  It was a great work out with fun, energetic music, and wonderful people!

Transportation

Golf Cart Capital: With over 90 miles of dedicated golf cart trails, residents use carts as their primary mode of transportation to access doctors, grocery stores, and recreation centers.

They had more parking for golf carts than they did cars!

The grounds are immaculate and so beautiful.  We all decided we liked the older villages because they had these majestic oak trees that simply took your breath away.

Michelle and I walked in the mornings and I spotted my first gator in the local pond!

On our way home from lunch we came across these beautiful cranes trying to cross the road.  Poor things had to be so scared but they made it across unscathed!

Jamie’s fur babies: Misha and Whiskey.  They are the most well -behaved dogs with wonderful dispositions.  

Mother’s Day

We all went out to celebrate Mother’s day.  I love these women!  

The next day we went up to a local fair in a village up “north.”  They had everything you could want from food, drinks, tourist items, baked goods, The Village residents stuff and more.It is always so hard to say goodbye.  Michelle had an early flight so we dropped her off before heading to our last stop  – Gator Land.

Gator Land

Jamie and I went to Gator Land, because why not?

I held a baby alligator and had a snake around my neck which hid in my hair 🙂

We watched a show where they made the gators jump for chicken, found a baby gator, a white gator, and some menacing gators.

Gator Land also had a lovely bird sanctuary.

Life is so much easier when you have remarkable women by your side. I’ve been extremely blessed with so many amazing women in my life.  But truly, Jamie and Michelle are my soul sisters and I feel so blessed to have been able to spend quality time with them.

Our blog posts run 4-6 weeks behind actual live events. 

I was in Florida the first part of May 2026.

Be sure to check out my last blog post where Duran Duran performs at The Beach Life Festival.