Panama City Beach was 36 degrees when we arrived, far better than our Canadian home, but not shorts and golf shirt weather, even for the hardiest of Canucks.
PANAMA CITY BEACH — The first pedestrian we saw when arriving at Panama City Beach on New Year’s Day was wearing earmuffs, ski jacket, long pants and gloves.
That’s a familiar sight at this time of the year in our hometown of Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, which is just north of Toronto. When we left there the day before, it was 26 below with two feet of snow on the ground, which are good reasons for wearing earmuffs and ski jackets, but seeing them in Florida was like finding a bonnet on a polar bear — very out of place.
Panama City Beach was 36 degrees when we arrived, far better than our Canadian home, but not shorts and golf shirt weather, even for the hardiest of Canucks.
This was our third consecutive visit to this area and the coldest. We learned it hadn’t been this cool here since 1994. Even the unofficial snowbird mayor, Neil Wasson, also from our area in Canada and who has been coming here for years, hadn’t seen it like this. The weather was far better, though, than the snow that Jacksonville received, its first blanket in three decades.
It was so cold on our first day here that an automatic car wash failed to produce its promised water, ripping us off for $3. A car wash without water is like, well, a beach without heat or the Super Bowl without New England.
We saw one couple so desperate to enjoy the beach they ran into the water in bathing suits, sprinting out faster than a rabbit wandering into a fox den. Surely, this couple was from another planet — Americans and Canadians are too smart to do this.
Even with the winter weather, it was nice to be back to a beautiful area where many Canadians and northern Americans come to escape their winter months.
Some things hadn’t changed: Gasoline prices were still higher than in Alabama, but much lower than Ontario, beer prices were almost half of Ontario’s, and dolphins continued to look majestic swimming in the Gulf. Where we come from, we’re lucky to see a muskie jump at our bait.
The construction before the Hathaway bridge was still going on, as it was two years ago. The road construction along Front Beach Road hadn’t seemed to have moved much further than last year.
The first days haven’t been great for us. But there has been some good news.
Sequence Fitness Center is still in business so we rejoined.
Walmart’s, Publix’s and Winn Dixie’s friendly staff and prices remained friendly. Many of the other visiting friends we have met here have returned, and it was wonderful to see them.
We were really happy to learn The Panama City News Herald was still in business. The daily newspaper is our favourite for local news, events, restaurants and food prices. It covers all the basics that make a good newspaper. These days, many of the world’s weeklies and dailies are taking a financial beating, so we were glad to see the area’s community businesses and readers still supporting it. We depend on it for so much more than local news and advertising, including our TV listings.
When I discussed this column idea with the paper’s assistant managing editor Stephanie Nusbaum, the plan was to give readers a look at what Canadians see, do and learn in their area. I think Stephanie was a bit taken by my last name of Arnold which has a school named after it in PCB, but, alas, no relation ... as far as we know.
In the coming weeks, we will be writing about some of the things we do such as where to get a haircut (that’s a big decision when you’ve had the same barber for 20 years) to our golfing, eating, entertaining, driving tours and, of course, shopping, whether it is at one of the many fantastic chain department stores and malls or locally owned stores as well as flea markets and garage sales.
Hopefully, even locals will be interested in this Canadian’s Panama experiences in the beach, the city and area. There is so much to see, do and write about in this wonderful district.
We can’t wait to start our journey.
Ed Arnold is a Peterborough, Ontario, journalist who was with a daily newspaper for 40 years before retiring. He is vacationing and sharing his experiences in this area. His weekly column will appear in The News Herald until the end of February.