In Search of Warm Weather

By Christina VanGinkel

As I sit at my desk writing this morning, the temperature on my outside thermometer reads a balmy twenty degrees. Some of you are thinking that is not all that cold, while others are thinking how anyone could stay where it is so cold. What everyone would agree on is that sometimes, people just need a change, weather wise that is. In my humble opinion, taking a vacation normally has nothing to do with needing a change of scenery, but everything to do with having to warm up, at least for those vacations taken in the dead of winter by those living in any northerly climate.

I lived most of my life in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and a short time in Minnesota. I also lived in Florida for about one year. I know from that one year in Florida that there is warm weather in January, but I can guarantee you that there is not warm weather in the other three states I mentioned, not unless you consider the mercury rising to above freezing, just above freezing that is, to be warm.

With the millions of people who reside in these states alone, there is enough cause for the travel industry to enter a busy period each winter. Just think of all the people who greet most winter days in the same way, by shoveling snow, turning the heat up high, or piling on the blankets come bedtime, and the vacation industry should be in good shape for eons to come, at least during the months of January and February. When the hustle of the holidays have passed, and that mercury I was discussing heads as far south as it can in its holders, many of us are in serious need of some natural warmth, so what choices do we even have to consider that might warm up our toes that currently feel as if they might never thaw? Check the extended weather forecasts, then pack your bags and take a long weekend in a state such as Florida, book a hotel room on the beach and just soak up some of that sun. While the Floridians might think that overnight temperatures in their state are not all that warm, when the sun comes up and heats things to about seventy, for those of us in need of some sun, seventy degrees sounds like heaven!

If you are in need of even more warmth than what a state like Florida has to offer at this time of the year, then book a flight to sunny Acapulco where the temperatures this week should be in the high seventies. For more warmth yet, how about heading to Maui, where the expected high temperature today is a very toasty eighty one degrees, or Oahu, where Monday they are expecting the temperature to crawl up to eight two. Kauai is also listed as having temperatures in the eighties in the next couple of days, so choose any one of them for some body warming sun therapy. At this time of the year, when my local expected temperature is suppose to possibly go up as high as thirty degrees, a choice of temperatures ranging from the low seventies to the mid eighties could be hard to choose from. I would probably have to let my pocketbook choose for me and just see which getaway I could arrange the fastest without draining my pocketbook dry. Deals are available for many of these places, so check out the expected temperature of wherever your heart desires to go, and then pack those winter woolies away for a few days and drag out your shorts and tanks and go soak up some sun.

A vacation in the winter to a sunny locale is often just what the doctor ordered, really! Sunlight deprivation is a common cause of depression, so a winter vacation that consists of crawling out of bed each morning and crawling into a lounge chair on a sunny beach, may be the ideal fix for a sun hungry body and mind. Add a few fresh fruit drinks to nourish that body, and you will have a complete agenda in place for feeling better. You can always consider it as an extension of your New Year's resolution to live this New Year healthier than those years that have passed. Warm weather, where are you?