Thanks to a partnership between the Brookdale Senior Living Solutions, a senior center Columbia, Tennessee, and Wish of a Lifetime, an organization that grants wishes to the elderly, centenarian Ruth Holt got to the see the ocean for the first time.

Holt, who lives at the senior center, spent most of her 100 years on a farm in rural Tennessee, picking cotton and raising four children. She never had the time or money to go to a beach. In November 2014, just a few weeks shy of her 101st birthday, she finally got her wish.

During an all-expense-paid trip to the Gulf of Mexico, Holt laughed and grinned as cool Gulf waters hit her feet. She said repeatedly the water was cold (as the day was only 50 degrees, it indeed was), but loved every minute of the experience and said she'd never seen anything as big as the ocean.

Holt said her farming family never was able to afford a trip to the coast, and she's left Tennessee only once before. She was always too busy on the farm or working in a shirt factory to travel.

The trip to the Alabama coast was her farthest venture ever from her home, about 400 miles north of the Gulf.