What's the topic? Why GP doesn't like Florida? I don't know, but I'll take his word for it.
Here are some other reasons GP might not like Florida:
-- No elevation, hence no views of anything from on high.
-- No mountains.
-- No shoreline to see when you're out on a big lake. Just flat nothingness on the horizon. Again because no elevation.
-- If you're paddling in grassy areas all you see is grass a few feet ahead of you, mile after mile. (Actually, not much worse than looking at endless alders on the Oswegatchee in NY.)
I can't argue with anyone who thinks Buffalo or Albany or Hartford or Baltimore or Winnipeg is a nicer place than Sarasota. Such a conversation would be useless. Like politics. I would have done anything short of using a tool to get a job in Sarasota 10 years ago. I tried so hard. It's gorgeous and cultured and artsy and sporty and oh, so, paddlecentric. But I failed and returned, defeated, to the People's Republic of Nutmeg and the cathedral of carnage.
I mainly think people who don't like Florida, especially canoeists, simply haven't been to the right places. Is it rational to say that you don't like New York State because you weren't impressed by your visits to Brooklyn or the Bronx?
If you like sea kayaking, Florida is surrounded by thousands of miles of coasts and keys. Blue-green and warm. Who cares if you fall in!
But Erica knows where to go, and I'm jealous of her. The only remaining real Florida is in the interior, the north and the panhandle. The coasts are all tourists, as is Disney Universe and much of the Orlando area. Miami is another country: It used to be Jerusalem but is now Havana or Bogota. But south of Lake Okeechobee and away from the coasts is a vast uninhabited nothingness. The central interior away from Disney, and especially north of Orlando up to Tallahassee, has rolling hills, hardwood trees, farms, ranches, forests, rivers, lakes, rednecks, and wonderful rivers and springs.
Florida has 33 first magnitude springs that pump out between 13-170 million gallons of crystal clear water every day, always between 70-72 degrees every day of the year. Most of these are paddleable. No waiting for ice out or snow melt or rain necessary. Who cares if you fall in!
Forget Tequesta. Forget the entire east coast. The west coast is much nicer, if you like the coast, and the vast majority of the paddleable rivers empty into the Gulf on the west and not the Atlantic in the east.
Bugs? In general, I find bugs to be much worse in the cold north than in Florida. Nothing is worse than northern black flies, and I think the mosquitoes are generally less in Florida, though you can find some bad pockets in stagnant pools.
Here's the road my daughter lives off in Tallahassee -- a town where I lived twice and where she was born. Not many natural palm trees. Just mile after mile after mile of what are called canopy roads -- arched over by my favorite tree, the live oak draped with Spanish moss and resurrection ferns.
