{"id":484,"date":"2014-06-17T09:45:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T16:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/?p=484"},"modified":"2014-06-17T09:45:24","modified_gmt":"2014-06-17T16:45:24","slug":"the-northenmost-caribbean-apartment-hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/2014\/06\/17\/the-northenmost-caribbean-apartment-hunting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Northenmost Caribbean – Apartment Hunting"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s really hard to believe it\u2019s already the well into June. The last few weeks have been quite a whirlwind. Wow… barely four weeks ago I was living in California and now I\u2019m living in the Northernmost Caribbean. Yeah… it\u2019s been quite a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Finding a place to live here turned out to be a challenge. First I had to drag a U-Haul trailer, with all the stuff I would need for survival, all the way across the country. I arrived in Fort Walton Beach on the evening of the 20th. Almost as soon as I arrived I couldn\u2019t help myself… I had to go to the beach. So trailer and all I went down to the \u201cBoardwalk\u201d. That\u2019s my favorite place in Fort Walton Beach. I just had to go see the sugar white, powder soft sand of the Northernmost Caribbean. Oh… those luscious white mounds at the Fort Walton Beach. Errrr…. mounds of sand.<\/p>\n

My first order of business was to find a place to live… that is, after visiting the beach. That turned out to harder than I thought. I really, really wanted to be within walking distance from the beach… and crawling distance from a local watering hole. When I was in Key West last year, I could stumble out of my place into any of several watering holes down on Duval Street. This year it didn\u2019t look as if it was going to work out that way.<\/p>\n

Trying to find a place at the beginning of summer isn\u2019t a good plan. Every place I went seemed to be overburdened with folks looking for a place to rent but they all seemed to want durations ranging\u00a0 from a week to a month or two. But… in Florida, anything less than six months is considered a \u201chotel\u201d and is taxed at 10.5%. So most of the \u201cregular\u201d places… apartments and such… require at least seven month long leases. I knew this from the beginning, but it seemed that thousands of people have descended on the area not knowing anything about this. So all of the places I was looking at were plagued with people clogging up the offices.<\/p>\n

To make a long story short… the place I really wanted to stay was full and the only thing I could do to get in there would be to get on a waiting list. Well, there was no way I could stay in a motel\/hotel until some day in the future when something would be available. So, I expanded my search to other areas along the Emerald Coast.<\/p>\n

Hummm…. the name, \u201cEmerald Coast\u201d, was dreamed up by the chambers of commerce all along the \u201cNorthernmost Caribbean\u201d. They got together to come up with a name that would attract tourists. Before they came up with \u201cEmerald Coast\u201d, the only semi-official name was the \u201cMiracle Strip\u201d… and \u201cMiracle Strip\u201d was really only used for the area around Fort Walton Beach. The name people used a lot for the region and beaches along the ocean was the \u201cRedneck Rivera\u201d.<\/p>\n

Well, the Chambers of Commerce couldn\u2019t let it stay known as the \u201cRedneck Rivera\u201d. So, they went through a long campaign to make the name \u201cEmerald Coast\u201d stick. And the world \u201cEmerald\u201d does a good job of describing the color of the water just a few yards off the shore. So not only do we have those luscious white mounds… of sand, we also have the emerald water. Just the same, I like the \u201cNorthernmost Caribbean\u201d better and that\u2019s what I\u2019ll use from now on.<\/p>\n

Anyway… my search for a place to live went all along the Northernmost Caribbean from nearly Pensacola to the West and Panama City to the East. Finding a place to live was hard work so I had to stop in to have a frozen concoction to help me hang on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A

A frozen concoction to help me hang on.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Finally I found a place I could move into right away in Panama City Beach… the place where tens of thousands of college students flock every Spring Break. It meets all of my requirements… I can walk to the beach and crawl home from the nearby watering holes. I\u2019m even close to a Margaritaville cafe… not close enough to crawl, but close enough to walk. Since they have live entertainment there every day, I suspect that I\u2019ll be spending more than the occasional visit there to have a frozen concoction to help me hang on.<\/p>\n

The place I ended up with is… well, paradise. This is my back yard. You can\u2019t see it in this pic because it\u2019s dark, but the tall buildings in this pic are right on the ocean.<\/p>\n

\"My

My Backyard<\/p><\/div>\n

I suspect I\u2019ll have lots of visitors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s really hard to believe it\u2019s already the well into June. The last few weeks have been quite a whirlwind. Wow… barely four weeks ago I was living in California and now I\u2019m living in the Northernmost Caribbean. Yeah… it\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}