Relocation Truth
We Moved 1,200 Miles and Knew Nobody. This Is What We Found.
Ben Cote • May 1, 2026
A Vermont family moved 1,200 miles to Northeast Florida with no connections and no safety net. Here's the honest account of what they found — the lifestyle, the community, and the moments that made it all click.
We Moved 1,200 Miles and Knew Nobody. This Is What We Found.
By Ben Cote | NE Florida Realtor | eXp Realty
What You'll Learn From This Post
- What daily life actually looks like after trading New England winters for Northeast Florida sunshine
- The moments that made us realize we made the right call
- What surprised us most about the lifestyle, the community, and the region
- The experiences still on our list — and why there's always more to discover
- Why families who visit Northeast Florida once almost always start researching the move
There's a moment that happens almost every morning that still doesn't feel real.
We load our girls into the golf cart, ride through the neighborhood in the sunshine, drop them off at daycare, and ride back together. Just the two of us. Sun on our faces. No agenda. No scraper in hand. No black ice to navigate.
Our son rides his bike to school every morning. By himself. At 9 years old. In Vermont that would have felt like a big deal. Here it's just what kids do.
We look at each other sometimes and just shake our heads.
This is Tuesday.
We moved our family from Vermont to Northeast Florida in the summer of 2025. One thousand two hundred miles. No connections here. No family down the road. No built-in safety net of any kind. We researched master-planned communities for months, chose Rivertown in St. Johns County, and made the leap on nothing but gut instinct and a shared belief that this was the right place to raise our kids.
We were right. It didn't take long to know.
This post is the list we wish someone had handed us before we moved. Not a tourist guide. Not a brochure. A real account of what we've found, what we've done, what's still on our list, and what daily life actually looks like when you trade New England winters for Northeast Florida sunshine. Some of it will surprise you. Some of it will make you want to book a flight. All of it is true.
What We Left Behind — And What We Got Back
Let's start here because this part matters more than people realize.
We didn't just leave Vermont. We left the windshield scrapers. The snow shovels. The driveway that needed plowing before anyone could go anywhere. We left the 4:30pm darkness in December that turns every evening into night before dinner is even started. We left the ritual of loading three kids into coats and boots and hats just to get to the car — a process that somehow takes longer than the actual trip.
We left winter roads. The anxiety of driving in conditions that are genuinely dangerous. The way a simple grocery run becomes a calculated decision in February.
None of it felt like a loss. Not even a little.
What we got back was time. An enormous, unexpected amount of time. Time that used to disappear into the maintenance of surviving cold — now just exists. For the kids. For each other. For the golf cart rides that have somehow become our favorite part of the day.
We visited Vermont over the holidays. It was perfect — the snow was beautiful, seeing family was everything, and our kids got their fix of sledding and all the winter magic that New England does better than anywhere. But by the end of the trip, they were asking when we were going home. Home to Florida. Home to their friends. Home to the sun.
That hit us differently than we expected. In the best possible way.
The Neighborhood
Our kids never want to leave.
We didn't fully anticipate this. We thought the big draws of Northeast Florida would be the beaches, the weather, the proximity to everything. And those things are real. But what keeps our kids planted — happy, confident, and completely at home — is the neighborhood itself.
Their school friends live in the community. The pool is walking distance. The playgrounds are right there. The cul de sac has become its own little universe where kids appear like magic on weekend mornings and don't go inside until someone makes them. There's a reasonable chance that wherever they go — the pool, the park, the playground — a friend is already there waiting.
Our son rides his bike wherever he wants. Our girls run to the playground without us hovering over every step. There's a sense of freedom here that feels increasingly rare — and it's not something we manufactured. It's just how the community is built.
We went from worrying about uprooting our kids to watching them become more fearless, more confident, and more socially comfortable than they've ever been. Kids are resilient. We knew that going in. But watching it actually happen — watching them thrive — was the moment we stopped second-guessing anything.
Finding Your People
One of the biggest fears families have before making a move like this is the social piece. You're leaving your circle. Your people. The relationships you've spent years building. And you're starting from zero somewhere you've never lived.
Here's what we didn't expect — it's easier than you think. Significantly easier.
Master-planned communities in Northeast Florida are full of transplants. Families who made the same leap from New England, the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic — all chasing the same thing. Better weather, better schools, better quality of life for their kids. The common ground is everywhere. You don't have to manufacture conversation or work to find connection. You just show up — at the pool, at the park, at a community event, at daycare drop-off — and the people are already there. Already like-minded. Already in the same chapter of life.
You find your people faster than you thought possible. Because in a lot of ways, they were already looking for you too.
The List — What We've Done, What Surprised Us, What's Still Out There
Things that prove you live somewhere special:
Watching a sunrise over the water on a random Wednesday morning. Seeing your first manatee from a kayak launch that's part of your community. Driving to the ocean on a Tuesday evening because you feel like it — and getting home before the kids' bedtime. Riding a golf cart as your primary mode of transportation and realizing at some point that it doesn't feel novel anymore. It just feels like home.
We took our kids to Disney World for Christmas. Not a vacation. A day trip. We woke up, drove to Orlando, spent as many hours as we needed in the park, and were home at a reasonable hour that same evening. In New England, Disney is a flight, a hotel, a production. Here it's a day trip in December. That shift in what's possible on a regular weekend is something you don't fully grasp until you're living it.
Things to do as a family:
St. Augustine deserves its own post — and it'll get one. But as a starting point: walk St. George Street with your kids on a weekend morning before the crowds show up. Climb the lighthouse. Do the ghost tour after dark when the kids are old enough — it's genuinely great. Go during Nights of Lights between November and January and watch your kids' faces when the entire historic district lights up. It looks like Europe. It feels like magic. It's 45 minutes from home.
What surprised us most about Northeast Florida was the sheer amount of nature and preserve trails that exist outside the community gates. We came from Vermont — we know trails. But the variety and accessibility of natural spaces here caught us completely off guard. Coastal preserves, river trails, state parks with old-growth canopies and wildlife you don't expect to find this close to a master-planned community. There is an entire outdoor world out here that most people driving through on I-95 never see. We've barely scratched the surface.
The freshwater springs within a couple hours of St. Johns County are unlike anything in New England. Crystal clear, 68 degrees year-round, manatees gathering in the winter months. Plan a day trip. Bring the kids. Watch their faces when they see the water for the first time.
Amelia Island is an hour north and still on our list. Fernandina Beach — the small historic town on the north end of the island — has a downtown that feels like a New England coastal village. Except warm, unhurried, and surrounded by Spanish moss. Boutique shops, fresh seafood, and the kind of afternoon that stretches out in the best possible way.
Things to do as a couple:
The restaurant scene in St. Augustine and Jacksonville is genuinely better than most people expect. St. Augustine's historic district has restaurants worth a dedicated date night — waterfront dining, craft cocktails, local seafood that tastes the way seafood should taste. Jacksonville's craft brewery scene has grown into something real — neighborhood spots worth exploring one at a time.
Sunset on the water — wherever you are, whatever body of water is closest — becomes a ritual you didn't know you needed. Photographs don't do it. You just have to be there.
Golf — a category of its own:
Northeast Florida is one of the premier golf destinations in the country. Year-round season. World-class courses at every price point. And TPC Sawgrass — home of The Players Championship — is right in our backyard.
Coming from New England where the golf season is five months long at best, the ability to play year-round alone is a lifestyle shift worth talking about. But The Players Championship takes it further. It's one of the biggest events in professional golf, held annually at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach — and the week surrounding it is an event in itself. Great atmosphere, world-class golf, and one of the most unique and iconic tournament venues the sport has to offer.
Worth knowing — The Players Championship offers complimentary tickets for multiple days including a competition round for active duty, reserve, retired, and National Guard members plus one dependent. As an Air National Guard member, that's a day I'm genuinely looking forward to. Still on the list. Moving up fast.
Things still on our list:
A Jaguars game. My son and I need to get to EverBank Stadium and experience an NFL Sunday in Jacksonville. That's a non-negotiable for this year — and there's actually no better time. The Jaguars are in the middle of a $1.4 billion Stadium of the Future renovation with completion targeted for 2028. Getting there this season means experiencing EverBank Stadium before it transforms into something completely new. There's something worth saying about watching a game in a stadium mid-renovation — you're witnessing the before. That's a story worth telling my son someday.
Beyond that — Amelia Island, more of the local restaurant scene, courses we haven't played, trails we haven't run, and stretches of coastline and river we haven't seen yet.
That's the thing nobody tells you about Northeast Florida. You don't run out of things to discover. You just run out of weekends.
What We Know Now That We Didn't Know Then
We moved here for the stage of life we're in. For our kids. For the schools, the community, the lifestyle, and the belief that this place would give our family something Vermont — as much as we loved it — couldn't.
What we didn't expect was how fast it would feel like home.
Not the community. Not the house. The feeling. The ease of it. The golf cart rides. The ocean on a Tuesday. The Disney day trip that was home by bedtime. The kids racing out the front door on Saturday mornings without being asked. Our son on his bike, independent and fearless, living the kind of childhood we always wanted to give him.
The moment we realized our gut was right wasn't a single day or a single event. It was a hundred small moments that kept adding up until there was no question left.
There are still mornings when it doesn't feel real.
We're okay with that.
If you're sitting somewhere in New England right now reading this and wondering if the move is possible — it is. We're living proof. And if you want to talk to someone who has been exactly where you are, we're not hard to find.
👉 thecotecollective.com/relocate
Ben Cote | NE Florida Realtor | eXp Realty | 802.734.2397
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