[purplemonkey426]

Ok so here is the situation. I am a registered nurse with Intensive Care Unit experience. My fiance hates living in Waco, Texas, so we are considering moving to Florida.
We want a nice town ( 75,000 - 150,000) that has low crime, rent that is affordable and nice, a good size hospital, and possibly a lake or river. My fiance is wanting to possibly get into the park ranger type of work. I would perfer to stay near the panhandle.
We know very little about the state, except that we do not want to live near the Miami or Jacksonville area.

PLEASE HELP TEXAS COUPLE WANTING TO MOVE TO FLORIDA.

[wacahootaman]

Look at Gainesville. It is a university town with 4 hospitals, the VA, Alachua General, North Florida Regonal, and Shands, the University hospital.

Being a University town with lots of young people it does have a high crime rate but many of the small rural town outside have more low crime demographics and are an easy commute to town.

There are several state forrests and parks and the Ocala National Forest is near by and the University has a lot of enviromental and forrestry spin offs.

[j in florida]

I second the Gainesville recommendation, it sounds just like what you are looking for.

[FL_TN_Nana]

If you want to stay in the panhandle area, you may want to check out Tallahassee since it's the largest city in that area with the university and state offices. Maybe do a search for the local newspaper in Tallahassee to check out housing costs, etc.

[SouthernBelle3]

I hope your finance doesn't mind making less than $12.00 an hour, because being a park ranger in Florida doesn't pay very well. UF has quite a few research centers that hire technicians, but jobs are not well paying and the work is research type of work. The field research work is really hot in the summer. If he likes working outside, there are many landscaping jobs most anywhere. Look on myflorida.com for job listings with the state and University of Florida web site for listings for the research centers.

[purplemonkey426]

Well we looked into gainesville the crime thing scared us. We were thinking pensacola or Oscala. Does anyone know how far Oscala is from a bigger city? This is a dumb question where is the UF at?
Thanks

[FL_TN_Nana]

Originally Posted by purplemonkey426

Well we looked into gainesville the crime thing scared us. We were thinking pensacola or Oscala. Does anyone know how far Oscala is from a bigger city? This is a dumb question where is the UF at?
Thanks

The University of Florida is in Gainesville. Ocala (no "s") is a bit south of Gainesville, maybe an hour or less on I-75. Probably 75 miles to Tampa and about that much, maybe a little less, to Orlando. Pensacola is on the border of Alabama. I didn't think Pensacola was all that large...but I've really never looked into that area to live. Florida State University is in Tallahassee. Tampa has a university. Orlando has the University of Central Florida. Miami has universities. Jacksonville has a university. Those are pretty much your larger cities and all have universities. Actually, Gainesville is smaller than the others but has a great university!