The place to retire is where you have close family and good friends to enjoy your life with. You can't have a good time with the weather and low taxes.
LG, welcome to this board. I think I tend to agree with you on this point. I think I would be unhappy with a permanent vacation life. However, people like the Terhorsts do seem able to make friends wherever they go, and enjoy that life very much.
A fairly large number of true early retiress don't have children. When their parents are dead, what is family? Are they close to their sibs? Cousins? And of course, even those of us with children are quite lucky if they don't move elsewhere after college, or get transferred on their jobs, etc.
Then there are friends. IMO, living the very frugal life that many have lead to achieve early retirement is not the easiest life to fill with friends. For one thing, once you get beyond church socials most social life is not free. Even the church may not be that welcoming if you can't pony up at least $1000 or so annual pledge.
Last weekend I was sitting in an outdoor cafe with my dog, a Bouvier. An older couple came over to ask about him, as he is an odd color, and they had owned a similar dog back home in Michigan. We talked a bit, and I learned that they had come out west at their daughter's urging, to escape the Michigan cold and be near her and her kids. But they were very unhappy. The man had been a design engineer with Fischer Body, then later Chevrolet. They missed their friends and social standing built up in a lifetime of living in the north suburbs of Detroit. I think they also may have felt that their daughter was getting a bit more of them than she had bargained on.
In some ways, the easiest life to transplant is the hippie lifestyle. Many of them are unmarried, so they only need to please themselves. If one's companion, should there be a companion, doesn't like the new situation, he or she can go on down the road. Always lots of unbound molecules around! And hippies are apt to have lots of friends and acquaintances all over. Especially in places with natural beauty and good weather.
America can be an odd place. We are so individualistic, and so used to choosing from a cafeteria menu, it is often hard for us to realize that some things just don't go well together.
Peace!
Mikey