If the first word out of your mouth after “Florida is famous for…” isn’t “beaches,” you’re definitely doing it wrong. For all its modern sophistication and attractions, the vast stretches of white-sand coastline are the state’s most essential stock-in-trade.
There’s a good reason for it, dating back to the end of the last Ice Age. Back then, the Appalachian Mountains were disgorging vast amounts of quartz crystals via the Apalachicola River, and they congregated in vast swathes on the newly emerging coastline of the Floridian peninsula.
