42.
We have friends who were able to retire in the late 1990s. Could go anywhere. She's from New Hampshire and hasn't lost a touch of her accent in 80+ years: he's from Georgia. They met when she was an Air Force nurse and he was intercepting Russian radio transmissions over SE Asia.
Drove all over the East and settled in the Shenandoah Valley.
He's happily retired. His wife started working again, and has been at it 22 years, although not as a nurse.
Yes, the South can be very pleasant. Small cities too, not just the big ones.
I took a family of France once on a drive up 441 through Georgia from the Florida to the NC state line. For a group that thinks all of the US is Orlando, New York, and Hollywood, yes it was revelatory.
If you hate pine trees, stay away from Georgia. At last count, 4000 for every man, woman, and child in the state. What horrors.
Speaks, care to speak of conditions in inland California, aside from your idyll?
A couple of years ago I drove across the South in the middle of the states driving back roads on my way to TX... and then to the Great Lakes and back down the Eastern seaboard.
There were lots of really nice old town squares and historic sites, beautiful woodlands and hills across GA, AL, Mississippi, and then there was Louisiana.
Besides being flat and plain, old and worn out, the people there were like slave labor zombies; all hope lost. It was very sad to see.