The Nude Life

Lo and behold the front page of The New York Times Web site today, where a 2-page color cover story in the Sunday Travel section highlighted the growing industry of nude travel and nude resorts.

The cover shot is of the main pool at Hidden Beach Resort and some guests playing nude water volleyball, one of the prime mid-afternoon activities at that lovely resort and one which I have enjoyed for many delightful hours. The accompanying photo gallery of shots from other resorts including the beautiful new Mira Vista Resort and Spa outside Tucson in Arizona are quite revealing, especially for a mainstream family newspaper.

Overall, a good article, ignoring the common mistake of labeling naturists as “naturalists” and the reference to Sea Mountain Inn as a legitimate nudist resort (it is not). This kind of ‘exposure’ can’t do anything but help bring the idea of taking a ‘nakation‘ to the minds of the several million Sunday Times readers this weekend — just ahead of a long, warm summer in the US. Millions more Web site readers will also be let in on the little secret we nudists have enjoyed for many years: once you take a nude vacation, no other kind of vacation measures up.

Big thanks to AANR for working with the Times reporters on this story for many months.

Our dearth of postings over the past few weeks can be explained by a goodly amount of business travel that has kept us away from the blog, but mainly it’s been that we have been very, very busy making all the arrangements to make our move to Cypress Cove near Orlando in a couple of months to start the nude life full-time.

We’ve been getting a real education in Florida’s homeowner’s insurance market (which was ruined by state meddling); in the Florida mortgage lending meltdown as the housing bubble bursts there and elsewhere; and in a couple of dozen other things we’ve had to arrange to make things happen for our new life as full-time nudists living at Cypress Cove.

I’m happy to report that everything is on track, and we have figured out a neat way around the mortgage mess as well as landing some reasonable insurance coverage. We anticipate closing in mid-May, and moving there from our home in Texas soon after, hopefully by June or July.

Now all we have to do in the meantime is quit our jobs, sell our house here, give away or sell 90% of everything inside it, and move. Figuring out what we can fit from our 3,800-sq.ft house into a single 8′ x 8′ x 16′ PODS moving unit is going to be interesting, too!

We know it will be worth it. Our nudist friends here who have asked about our plans are envious of us already, and we can’t help getting excited by the adventure, fun and freedom that will accompany this life-changing shift in location and lifestyle. Breaking the news to our few remaining relatives and friends (all of whom have no idea at all that we are nudists!) will come when it has to: never, if they don’t want to come visit us (which most won’t), and honestly and without shame for those who do.

I’m very glad to have had our guest bloggers Steve and Angie posting some new items during my slowdown in posts, and I hope they have a great time at Haulover Beach this coming week. Let’s hope they post some reports from their visit and perhaps a few vacation snaps as well!

Meanwhile, The Nude Life Forum still has regular visits and posts from nudists all over the world. If you haven’t checked in lately, by all means drop in again soon and let us know what’s on your mind! And, happy Spring Equinox to all those in the Northern Hemisphere! Summer will be here soon!

Woo woo!  We’re going to Haulover Beach!  If everything works well we’ll be there the 26th thru 28th of March, a long needed respite from this goddamn frozen hellhole of Wisconsin.  Pardon the language but this has been one awful winter.

Thanks to Angie’s new airline job, we get lots of free air travel and are damned intending to use it!   First stop, Miami Beach! 

Got a hotel 125 yards down the beach from Haulover, plan to get decently sunburned.  If we don’t, it’s our own fault.  Like I told Angie, we don’t have much money but we can go where the rich folk do!

We’ve gotten so sick and tired of winter that we were ready to move South

 to escape it.  That means leaving family and grandkids behind, not so good.  With her new job, and occasional escapes to places warmer perhaps we can hold on a few years longer.  We’ll see.

We still long to move to a nudist community where we can be us most of the time.

Like I said, we’ll see.   Ah, for a perfect world… 

- Steve

P.S. - To our Northern friends, we won’t be there long enough to send postcards, but we’ll be thinking of you!  Ah, actually, probably not .  Sorry about that…  ;-)  

I call your attention to the new page linked to at the top of The Nude Life blog starting today, Places. It’s a short summary of all the various places we’ve visited in the 15 years we’ve been nudists, along with a list of other nude trips and destinations where we’ve been able to go nude.

I’m sure we’ve left some off the list that we’ve forgotten about, and doesn’t include plans for nude trips yet to come, but it will serve as a bit of a history for us and our nude wanderings to date.

Feel free to post your own list of the nude destinations you’ve visited or want to visit, or ask about resorts or beaches you’re interested in, in The Nude Life Forum.

We managed to get out of Dallas/Ft. Worth before the season’s first ice storm hit, so we are warm, dry and nude in Orlando now at Cypress Cove. After checking in, getting our clothes off (of course!), getting unpacked, and renting our golf cart for the week, we toured the residential community to survey the many homes for sale right now. There are a lot to choose from, and by the time we meet with the general manager for our prospective resident screening interview, we should have a good list of possible future home sites to select from.

Our first visit to Cypress Cove was probably more than a decade ago. Back then, the resort was way, way outside the boundaries of development of Kissimmee, far, far into the country. We remember driving past the edge of town, into the black darkness of moonless Florida summer night without a single street light to shed any light — and then finally, Cypress Cove’s entrance was there in the darkness. We can only imagine how remote and “past the end of the world” it was 44 years ago when Cypress Cove first opened — before Disney ever heard of Orlando, and before there was anything like commercial air service to the region.

Now, of course, the huge growth of Orlando has spread all the way to Cypress Cove and beyond. There’s a brand-new Lowe’s home center opening up in a few months, directly across the highway from Cypress Cove’s entrance. There’s a Publix, a Wal-Mart, a Home Depot, and everything else you can think of from a typical suburban American city, right outside the gates of this beautiful retreat. So, we won’t lack for convenience or shopping choices once we move here.

The goal of the week is to get a good offer ready on a home to buy here, and to go through what we think will be a formality of a resident interview. The criminal and credit background check will take about 30 days, and then the Cove’s Executive Board will vote on whether to approve us for residency. We’re certain all of that will go well.

Tomorrow, some sightseeing in the area, some sunning by the pool if the weather cooperates, and then Friday night’s activities at the Cheeks Bar and Lakeside Restaurant and Lounge. We hope to get to know some of our soon-to-be-future neighbors. And we are very glad to be far, far away from the ice and cold of Dallas this week, able to enjoy mild, sunny, nude days at Cypress Cove.