Ah, Homestead. My wife grew up in Ft. Lauderdale - well, Plantation specifically, which was fun to explain to her mixed college class in Dallas! lol

I had a below-knee amputation three years ago and it made pants a real pain in the ass (because the leg comes with the shoe, so it's like putting on pants with your shoe on) - so I basically wear shorts now. Gets me some odd looks, and it is a little cold, but I'm usually only outside long enough to go to the car or go from the car to inside. heh. But I layer t-shirts under my shirt for warmth - ever since Florida, I feel like I gained the right to wear Hawaiian shirts, and I like the reactions I get - I'm old enough now that I don't care what people think except I like to make 'em smile. :)

I don't know where Cradock is, alas. Well, I just looked it up, though. I've been through there a couple of times, but haven't spent much time in Portsmouth.

We moved to VB in 2018 and lived for a year in the flight path of Oceana NAS - right up against I-264 just east of First Colonial. Then my wife got hired at Colonial Williamsburg and was making that 1h15m+ commute to Wburg, so we ended up moving to James City county, which I thought was awesome living in the county that Jamestown is in. But we just moved down to Newport News. I like Wburg, but we wanted to be with a little more variety of food, and with all the military down here, it's much better.

So I've been on probably most of the major roads in every one of the cities except Poquoson and the nearby part of Hampton over there on that side of I-64, and I haven't been much around Portsmouth to Suffolk, but Chesapeake, VB, Norfolk, most of the Peninsula, I have. heh.

Hampton Roads is wild. Before we moved here, I really didn't know much about this part of the country at all, and I hadn't really heard about Hampton Roads; I'd heard a little bit about Norfolk and knew there was some navy stuff here, but that was about it. heh.

Actually, in 2009 I did an internship in Seattle but had an orientation for it in DC, so I drove from Florida - but I wanted to drive through a few extra states to say I had, so I peeled of I-95 and came over to Hampton Roads so I could cross the CBBT (which was amazing) and go up into Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, then back down I-95 to DC for the orientation. So I think it's hilarious I drove through here before we moved here 9 years later. heh

Oh, and forgot to get back to that bit - I am right now right off Jefferson just south of Atkinson, so not too far north of Denbeigh. hehe. It's perfect since all my doctors are in Williamsburg and Rachel still works at CW, so while her commute had been like 7 minutes, now it's still only just over 20, so it's really not bad.

I really did like Williamsburg. After growing up in DFW, when we moved to Panama City with 150k people in the metro area, it was just so small. Moving to VB felt like civilization again, but after a year I kinda liked the small-town feel of Wburg. But now I'm back to liking being in a real city. lol. The traffic really isn't bad, and there's just so much more stuff down here.

I really hope South Carolina feels like home for you for as long as you're there. I know every place has its positives and negatives. I definitely wouldn't want to go back to DFW at this point. I miss the severe weather, but I don't miss tha traffic, and I've grown to be spoiled on real trees. This winter has been damned long with the spate of really cold temps, but summer is just that much prettier, I suppose. I'm even getting used to fall. Winter even, for a couple of months. lol. I'm working on it. :)