All of this talk about where someone should live sure makes me miss certain places, and I would love living on the panhandle. That all being said, I think age is a major component of this discussion. If you are 22ish and just finishing your BSN that's entirely different from someone who went back to school or made a career change a bit later in life. We are about as close as one can get to Disney. I love it, but that's partially because I have younger children, who love it.
Part of me has always maintained it's silly to live in FL and not be near the coast. I just can't imagine living more than about 4 or 4.5 hours from a place you think you'll want to visit on a semi-regular basis. As I said in a previous post, though, in a nursing career you can very easily move every couple of years if you wanted until you found where you want to settle down. Heck you might even decide you want to live closer to DL where you can still visit that crazy Mr. Toad.