Relocating to Florida:
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Welcome to the Sunshine State
By David Robinson

Congratulate yourself. You are pulling duty in sunny Florida. Think about it. Where do millions of retirees choose to live after working a lifetime somewhere else? Where do thousands of students from all over the map choose to blow their precious spring break? Where do some 30 million visitors flock in by car or plane every year? And where did Spain choose to plant St. Augustine in 1565, the first permanent European settlement in what's now the continental U.S.?

Now it's your turn to find out why Florida has been pulling people in since Ponce de Leon came looking for gold and the Fountain of Youth in 1513. He found neither. But you'll find the same sun, sand, and endless summer that he found, and a lot that's been added since - the theme parks, the dolphin shows, the baseball training camps, the space shots that you can watch
for free, and especially the relaxed lifestyle of people who don't have to endure a winter's icy breath, who pick lemons off a tree in their own yard, who play golf and grow flowers year round, and who can get to the ocean in minutes - or at most, an hour or two - from just about anywhere in the state.

Before you mothball those winter jackets, though, better find your duty station on a map. If it's in the north or out on the western panhandle, you'll need a jacket or two, because you'll see your breath on many a winter morning and even knock a little snow off your windshield now and then. Farther south on the peninsula the citrus growers may have to fire up the smudgepots against a January frost. Miami basks by the sea some 450 miles south of the Georgia line, yet even with an average winter low in the 60s, the city that once called itself "America's sun porch" shivered through its first-ever snow flurry in 1977. read more . . . .