My New Blog

All those from New Jersey, I’m sure you’ve heard it before…Bennies. When you vacation at the Jersey Shore, it’s a term the locals use for the tourists. For the few who don’t know the term, a Bennie is someone who is from Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark or New York who vacations at the Jersey Shore. But anyone from New Jersey has a tough skin, and it really doesn’t bother most to be called a Bennie. The Jersey Shore has always been a great place to visit in the summer, and it always will. But as we get a little older, and those Jersey Shore winters got colder and longer, many of us have decided to run south.

South Florida is a haven for the warm weather and sunshine. We all packed our bags and moved to thaw out our creaking bones. What a great place to live. It didn’t bother us that the locals called us Snowbirds. We were the tourists who came for the winter and went home to the northeast in the summer. Many of us moved here permanently. But as the taxes increased, the home insurance became impossible to get, and the hurricanes threatened to blow us away, many of us bennie-snowbirds retreated. With so much year-round warm weather, we actually missed the seasons and the snow, but we just couldn’t bear the thought of another icy New Jersey winter.

So that’s when we became “half-backs”. We have discovered the most beautiful place on the east coast to hang our hats. The beautiful mountains of Northern Georgia, in the quaint little town of Blue Ridge, we bought our vacation home. The scenery is beautiful, the weather is mild, but we still get a sense of the seasons. A half-back is someone who started in the northeast, moved to Florida, and halfway back. That’s us! We have sold our home in Florida now, and have made Blue Ridge our home, so that makes us Bennie-Snowbird-Halfbacks!

It is refreshing to live in a quiet, quaint, small mountain town. I plan to stay here, and I invite all those Bennies and Snowbirds to try it. Blue Ridge, GA is one of the top 5 vacation home destinations in the country, according to TripAdvisor.com. Please check our our website at www.MountainInvestments.com, or just email me and I will send you some info. Just plan on living the slow life! I have grown up understanding that the “locals” and the “tourists” are really on the same side, only they don’t always know it. No one wants a beautiful area to change. We all know it will happen, we just don’t want it to happen to us! I’m happy to be a mountain girl now, and I’m happy to be a Bennie-Snowbird-Halfback, too!