I grew up in South Florida (not a native), and my experience of strip malls and ever widening highways is: if there was a state below Florida, that's where the desperate and unrooted migrants would have kept driving to.

I spent my childhood fishing in a swimsuit every day I could. I loved it. But as an adult, any south of Ocala and east of Gainesville is a cultural wasteland (with cutouts for Miami and Tampa).