Early Saturday morning, as the sun was slowly creeping into the sky, illuminating the vast flatness surrounding me, I let out a long groan. The groan wasn’t because my Spring Break companions and I had been in my car for the past eight hours, overwhelmed by the rancid odor emitted from the bags of dirty Spring Break clothes stuffed in the back.

It wasn’t because we had finally figured out just how much money we had carelessly tossed away in less than a week or remembered how long it had taken each of us to earn and save the same chunk of change.

The groan wasn’t even largely inspired by the thought of attending classes again in a meager two days or the epic task of starting and finishing those semester projects due this week that your professors explicitly warned you not to put off until after you got back from Spring Break.

No, that loud, thoughtless groan came when I saw the “Welcome to Iowa” sign taunting me by the side of the road.

As pathetic as this is, prior to our Spring Break road trip to Panama City, Fla., I had never even set foot in a state other than our beloved Iowa or one of its many wonderful neighbors. The highlights of my traveling life had been a trip to Minneapolis, the occasional jaunt to Chicago and a single venture to St. Louis to see the Cardinals in action.

I always heard fascinating tales from my friends who traveled. Stories of how some states actually have mountains instead of the vast flatness broken up only in winter by massive snowdrifts. Tales of being on the edge of the country, that thing they call the “coast,” and swimming in the ocean waves, a phenomenon they assure me is not accurately reproduced in the Mississippi River.

Thus, I was filled with anticipation at the thought of passing through such exotic locations as Troy, Ala., and Dothan, Ky., on our trek down south. I was amazed to see pleasant, green grass on the ground and living vegetation all about. It seems that down south it stays warmer than Iowa. In fact, some regions don’t even get snow!

Now, I can safely say that at least Florida is clearly superior to the great state of Iowa. I have now seen the ocean, tasted the ocean and basically gotten thrown about by the ocean. I actually think I may still be carrying a little bit of the ocean’s salt in my wounds, a constant, pleasant reminder of my time on the coast. And while it is a close call, I would have to take the ocean over the Mississippi.

And life in Florida is clearly more laid back than up here. In Iowa, I have to worry about life, trying to do this whole school thing and ponder the many uncertainties in my life.

In Florida, I had zero worries. I spent my days on the beach, trying to get just a little bit of sun on my albino hide while not blinding my fellow beachgoers with the reflection of the sun off my vast whiteness.

The nights were an enjoyable blur of alcohol, randomly distributing money, pathetic attempts to dance, chatting with my former high school classmates I didn’t even talk to when we went to school together and freak rainstorms.

Everybody was drinking, everybody was having a good time and one can only reasonably assume that the behavior of my fellow Spring-Breakers in one part of Florida is clearly representative of the entire state. Nobody was worrying about hog prices or corporate farms or genetically modified corn.

We got our news updates on the ongoing “great” war in Iraq from ESPN or when CBS would break in during the NCAA tournament games.

It seems that the state of Florida is disconnected, isolated and loving it. They don’t have a care in the world or a worry on their minds and they thrive in it. The residents of Florida are my kind of people, and I want to go back.