Mustn’t forget Reptile Gardens in Rapid City.
IMO it’s the cultural high point between Leavenworth, WA and Chicago.
I had friends who did a road trip about ten years ago (one of them was trying to “get” all 50 states), and this is almost exactly how they described most cities in the South. They found it depressing.
Oh - and I MIGHT be willing to go to the Orlando parks - IF someone paid all of my expenses and maybe $1k a day.
Back in the day Mrs. J. and I visited Reptile Gardens. I’m surprised she was willing to go, given her fear and loathing of snakes. We were walking through one naturalistic exhibit when she cried out, “They’re loose!!!”
A fond memory.
Many’s the time I’ve passed the billboards on I-80, but never got to visit Clyde Peeling’s Reptiland.
Pretty sure the impetus here is Florida’s well publicized homestead law that keeps anyone from taking your residence in the event of a civil judgment, criminal profit disgorgement order or bankruptcy. Same reason why OJ moved to Florida, to escape having to pay a civil judgment.
Sure. In a very thick wet suit 
.
Yeah, I think this is big issue for a certain category of tourist. As a little kid I used to love playing in the surf on Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Eventually you’d have to come in to warm up for a bit because your legs would start to go numb. That’s not even to mention the persistent undertow and riptides that make it probably the most dangerous beach in the United States. As scenic as they are, Pacific beaches in the U.S. are mostly considerably rougher and colder than Atlantic beaches. Add in the increased expense and it is rather less attractive for the beach bums.
My BIL is a very wealthy retired accountant. About a decade ago, he and my sister moved to FLA - in large part to get away from IL’s high taxes. (Of course, no sooner did he get there than he began bitching about the crap services! :D)
I’m stupid about taxes and finances myself, but this one datapoint saw some financial/tax advantage. Plus he golfs every day!
@Buttercup_Smith has been there for decades maybe she can explain it
When we were in SoCal - Newport Beach - a couple of years ago, I was impressed at the group I saw distance swimming well off shore. No idea wha they were wearing, but I couldn’t even make it out to the point where they stared swimming large triangular laps.
Lifeguard training. I swam the pier to pier qualifying swim but took too long to make the cut.
That was similar to my SoCal beach when I was a kid. You didn’t mention jellyfish, though. We’d all keep our eyes peeled, and if anyone saw one, you’d yell “JELLYFISH!” as loud as you could. It would start a massive surge of kids toward the sand.
No alligators. You forgot no alligators.
California has a looooong coastline. The beaches up at Lost Coast are entirely different than Santa Monica. Around Santa Barbara the California Current that flows south from Alaska veers off the coast and you can swim without a wetsuit. But people in California, even Southern California, go the beach to cool off. I was extremely disappointed to find that North Carolina beaches are more like tepid salt lakes than real, California-like beaches. You can wade slowly out for many yards while the unpleasantly warm water laps at your thighs, breathing the thick hot air. Hard to imagine Florida is any improvement.
In many locations off the Outer Banks in NC, you can literally go 25 miles out into the Atlantic and the bottom looks exactly like the areas 25 feet off the beach. It’s just deeper. Water temps are about the same.
What Florida has is a very comprehensive sunshine law that ensures every single arrest in the state is posted to the WWW within hours. Most states keep arrests a non-public record until / unless there’s a conviction.
Florida has some damn ignorant yokels for sure; whether urban yokels or rural yokels doesn’t matter. But having lived in 5 states long-term and worked with police departments scattered all over this fine country of ours, I can say with some confidence that yokels be everywhere.
Florida’s are just much more searchable for folks writing clickbait listicles.
Absolutely. I was agog at the number of people on the beaches tanning themselves bronze.
Seafood! People the appeal is seafood!
Florida is lovely if you completely avoid all the major cities and go for the nature and wildlife, which is pretty much the only reason I travel. Sure it doesn’t have any elevation, but the snorkeling is great (compared to where I am at least), and the biodiversity of reptiles, birds, fish and marine invertebrates is interesting. There’s also more diversity of habitat than I think people give it credit for - beaches, pineland, grassland, mangrove swamp, and some very large springs.
I don’t have to shovel the heat.
That, I don’t think anyone can argue with.
Not only do you not have to shovel, but in mostly not having to deal with that ever, at all, it has an advantage over those places where there is as a norm a mild winter with little or no snow, but that then when it does come the place will fall into utter chaos, since nobody ever gets enough experience to deal with it.
Of course at some point you’ll get an Arizonan to pop in about the superiority of their “dry heat” …
I am right now not in the mood to do a search, but come to think of it I remember we’ve had threads regarding the virtues or defects of various regions/states/cities or more generic habitation environments (rural/small town v. suburb v. big city) where there’s always some segment of the participants in utter disbelief of what do the others see in the place. Eventually we will cover the whole country.