Winter retreats from the cold
 

Hey Retirees (or soon to be) please help me out with some ideas.

Wife and I are two years away from retirement :) . Kids are out of the house (and off the payroll!) and plan is to ditch the family home and hang out Spring/Summer/Fall in our condo at Lake Tahoe. Gets pretty cold up there in the dead of Winter and neither of us are big skiers anymore nor do I really enjoy shoveling snow, scraping ice off the car, or putting on chains so looking for some ideas on where to escape to warm up for three of four months during Winter. Could be U.S. or Intl.

Wife (non-cyclist) enjoys the beach and of course must have good road or mountain cycling for me.

Have spent time in Mexico, Santa Barbara and San Diego and those are viable options for extended winter stays. Coworkers have suggested I check out southern Texas along the gulf.

Plan is to take a couple of longer vacations (month +/-) to check out warm winter getaways during the next two Winters before retirement. Starting to make plans for this Winter.

Have some other ideas for me?

Thanks.

Palma de Mallorca, ride with the Pros, wife hangs with the beautiful people.

Arizona. All we need is water, and a better class of people. Bring water with you, and we're all set.

Some really good mountain bike riding in Arizona for me. Enjoyed a bunch of it a couple years ago on a trip through the southwest Need something more beachy for the wife though. She isn't good with dry.

We do just that for the last 6 years now, we leave for Galkissa, Sri Lanka the day after christmas and come back to the states on the 31st of March. I get this perfect months of riding in extreme heat and mega humidity. It is wonderful

Never been to Spain. Except for the "riding with the pros" part (I race mountain and cross with the "middle age and slow!") that could be fun to check out this Winter. Plenty of beach opportunities for the wife to explore while I'm out riding dirt and gravel roads.

Mallorca and the 'Spanish Riviera' (what I would call Malaga/Torremolenas) are easy for Americans as the English are regulars, as well as Germans and other northern europs. No major language issues, but learn some Spanish (or Mallorcan) before you go.


I have no specific recommendations as it has been a while since my last visit. I remember far fewer cars on the island than the mainland; not sure if that is still true.


Portugal is outrageously affordable, south coast might be worth investigating during a vacation.
(Think I would avoid France, and not meant as a slam on the french natives)




edit: probably cheaper to take up skiing again and heat your driveway. Tahoe was my ski-location for 20+ years. But I get shoveling heavy wet snow.

Thanks. Was not thinking that direction. That'll be a good local to discuss with my wife. She is going to love the beach access. My lovely wife is thinking Costa Rica. Spanish Riviera looks like a nice alternative to check out this Winter.

I was lucky and thought to move to our retirement location at age 18, Northwest Florida! Even built our retirement home 36 years ago, and I finally got to retire this past June. We have all the great weather of the rest of the state but with nowhere near as many people. We are probably similar to the south Texas gulf coast that someone else suggested to you, weather-wise. Northwest Florida is very different from most of the rest of the state, even we aren't fond of the rest of the state. No state income tax either, we are well funded through all the sales tax the tourist leave us. Lots of nice biking trails, and our beaches consistently rank in the top ten in the world -- sugar white sands and warm gulf waters!

We've been exploring snowbird locales as well. Majorca and much of southern Spain is definitely good. Best for us is that they are slowly improving the bicycle transportation infrastructure and largely to Dutch standards which makes it comfortable for both of us to ride to dinner or the grocery (bicycling for daily transportation is very high on our list).

Marco Island (FL) is also an option. Get a house on one of the canals. You can easily ride everywhere on the island including to Residents Beach. There are only a couple of places my wife won't ride to. For training rides we'll head out over the southern bridge near Goodland to avoid the idiot drivers on Collier Blvd. Sanibel may also be an option but a very different vibe than Marco. Sadly Florida has antiquated traffic engineers who believe in high speed wide lanes and wide radius turns at junctions and anything else to make roads dangerous for everyone on them.

We're also considering Naples FL as it has much better restaurant options. Drawback to Naples is extreme car traffic and few bikeways which makes it unappealing from a noise, pollution, and danger standpoint.

This topic has come up a few times on here so some searching will offer some other good options.

We love both Rosemary Beach and Seaside. Great walkable bikeable human friendly communities. Unfortunately the weather in Jan - Mar is a bit less warm and sunny than we'd like. I'd love to see places like them farther south.

The Other Hemisphere.. NZ, Australia. Other side of the road too.

We ride our bikes through Rosemary and Seaside, great areas but pricey compared to living on the bay just a few miles away like we do. I love kayaking as much as biking and I am just minutes away from kayaking in beautiful waters. We do get some colder weather but not bad compared to most areas, even snowed almost an inch in 1989! I still bike and/or kayak about any day of the year.

The areas you mentioned like Marcos Island are also gorgeous, warmer but more traffic in that part of the state.

Arizona, particularly Tucson, surprised me. A lot of trashy places between Phoenix and Tucson, but lots of nice bike trails once you get there.

This next winter we're seriously thinking of spending a couple of months in Durban, South Africa. It's summertime there, the country is friendly, the scenery spectacular, and it's really affordable. The fact that one of our granddaughters lives there is a plus, of course...

Yep!

Since we're escaping from Minnesota cold & snow we prefer, or at least my wife does, some place warmer than the 30A coast. She really likes to lay out in the sun (pool or beach), go for walks on the beach or shopping, play golf without a jacket, etc.

Yes, the traffic (and noise, pollution, and danger that come with it) are quite unappealing. Also largely unnecessary. Marco is quite small. You almost have to plan carefully to come up with a drive of more than a couple of miles. They could easily have made it a walk and bicycle haven and one much more appealing than Seaside or Rosemary but they were short-sighted and didn't when they had the chance. So it remains clogged with gobs of cars filled with fat people riding 1 mile to dinner and not paying attention to people who are walking or riding bicycles.

That said, Marco is better than many places in Florida, but that's not saying much. Let's remember that Florida has the highest pedestrian and bicycle fatality rates in the US.

Naples could also be a great inviting walkable and bicycleable place. We'd love to see that as we much prefer Naples food options to those on Marco. But while walking and bicycling are at least a bit of an option on Marco, they are not currently in Naples.

What's retirement?

España me encanta.

I can't imagine wanting to live anywhere but right here.

We have it pretty good down here in SoCal too. Central Cal looks pretty sweet though. More wineries. Less cars.

I moved to San Diego six-years ago for winter time bicycling. It is hard to imagine a better place to live an be a full time bicycle rider. I live on a 40-foot sailboat on Harbor Island just 2-miles from downtown. I was a hard core road and mountain bike rider in the Pacific NW for 40-years before moving to San Diego. I rode year round rain, shine, or snow up there. Now - after a couple years in San Diego I will not go for a ride if the road is wet or the temperature is below 62. I seldom miss a day of riding here.

- I ride all winter in shorts and light jersey. Sometimes I wear a wind breaker. The daily coastal high is always 65 to 70 and the inland (more than 8-miles from the coast) is usually 70 to 78.

- It rains about 36-hours every 10-days from early December thru mid-March.

- There is a wide variety of riding available.

-Road rides - From our boat we can pickup bike paths or bike lanes that lead to several 50-mile rides with very little climbing. Or, I can ride east 12-miles and be in the foothills where I can ride beautiful scenic 5% - 8% grades up to 6,000'. It is easy to plan a 50 to 100 mile ride with 4,000' feet climbing on a circular route. Or, drive 45-minutes east and start at 3,300' and do one of dozens of mountain centuries in spectacular scenery. Typical 5,000' temperatures mid-day in January are 50 to 60 degrees.

- Dirt rides - there are hundreds of fantastic fire roads, easy single track, and highly technical single track within a 45-minute drive from my boat. I can ride three technical routes a week and not repeat a ride during the winter. There is even 8-miles of pretty interesting single track in Balboa Park with some technical climbs and drops- just one mile from the heart of downtown.

The only drawback to San Diego is the cost of living. Rentals are expensive and purchasing a home is almost beyond a regular person's financial ability.

And - the summers are nearly perfect! If you stay within the coastal zone the temperature seldom exceeds 80. Or, head inland and you can ride in 90 to 95 degree dry sunshine every single day.

If you're only thinking of a retirement home for 3 or 4 months a year why not get to see the world more and have a different long term rental each year. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other Asian countries are all in summer during November to March. Southern Europe, especially Spain, Greece and Italy also have warm(ish) winters.

Much more interesting than going back to the same place each year.

I'm not too crazy about winter either. For now I usually slap on a pair of snowshoes or crampons and go hiking in the local mountains in the winter, and then come home and park myself 18" from the wood stove to warm up afterwards, with a good ale in hand.

However we inherited a 2-bedroom townhouse near Vancouver BC from my wife's late mother. I'm retired, my wife in about 2 more years, so it looks like we'll spend winters there. It's not super warm but it is generally cyclable year round, and there's snow nearby if I ever get the bug to hike in the mountains again. There's rarely snow in winter in the lower Fraser valley. Bonus for my wife, she's originally from the area and her sister and brother live out there. We'll probably sell our big house in Quebec (kids are all gone) and build/buy a smaller pied-à-terre here as the cycling is great in these parts, as are the scenery, food, local wines, etc.

I enjoy hanging out with my friends and neighbors --so the idea of moving somewhere else in retirement troubles me a bit. Several neighbors have discussed the possibility of collaborating on a common destination. We would all agree to rent in a certain area for a certain time frame. Popular ideas so far include Azirona and Florida, but Costa Rica and Belize have also been mentioned. These are mostly families with common interests in biking, golf, and partying. We imagine snow-birding at a common spot for a few years and then trying somewhere else for a few years, etc. Nothing has come together yet but it might.

You might not have thought that plan all the way through, Wildwood.

Phoenix natives buy retirement property further north at higher altitude. It's nice to be in short sleeves at Christmas but you can't take off enough clothes to keep you cool from about Easter to Halloween

The Villages
 

I'd be interested in learning more about The Villages in Florida as a potential retreat for seniors who like to bike a lot ... trails, bike clubs, etc.

St. Bath's. Great food, slighly European culture, lovely scenery, and plenty of hills to keep you fit after all those awesome French meals. But--you have to be able to handle the final approach to the St. Jean runway. Sheer terror!