The Tampa RV Super show

     We arrived at the Florida State Fair grounds on Tuesday morning. We were in and set up by noon. We have 22 rigs in our group.        Meeting up at reststop along I75, on the way to the Tampa show.

Our group, We are to the right of the yellow barrel, our RV is the one with the brown front.  In the back ground is the parking garage of the Hard Rock Casino.

    We are camped in the same area as last year. The show doesn't open till Wednesday but we were aloud in for a private showing of the new Lifestyles 5th wheels. We will be helping answer questions about the Lifestyles and the Carriage Club. Lifestyles formed a alliance with the Carriage Club. Lifestyles work force is 95 % former Carriage employees. The units are built similar to the Carriage Cameo. We sat in a unit on two different days for 3 hours. There were 5 new rigs and each day 3 couples from our club sat in to answer questions. Both days we "worked" other club members sent folks to us to tell them a little about the full time RV live style. Many folks were  interested in our lifestyle. We had a fun time talking to all the folks that stopped by.
      The show is like a home coming. We met up with Art and Jan from our hometown camping club. We also met up with six couples we had worked with at Walt Disney World. Friends Barry and Donna from GA stopped by for a visit. The first night we went with five other couples to the Spaghetti Warehouse in Ybor City. We had a great meal. I had the lasagna which was big enough to feed a  family of "little people". But I did manage to finish it. Linda had a spaghetti dinner and had the same problem trying to finish her meal. Linda wanted to take a group picture and a fellow offered to take the picture. He just happened to be one of the members of The Malt Shop, the group that just performed at Blueberry Hill  RV Resort were we had our last rally. They are also performing at the Super show on Thursday night. So Linda had to take a picture of them.

    Each day we have a attitude adjustment hour. One day Dave, a member of our group, made a super "Gumbo". It was a long day for him, and he did a super job, and everyone loved the Gumbo. Dave did learn his skill while living in Louisiana.
    Another day we took a tour of the Yungling brewery in Tampa. We had a really great tour guide. A good tour guide can make the difference between a good tour and a not so good tour.

Far right, Lance asking "where's mine"

On the way back to the fairgrounds we stop at Garden's Gyro. Never had a gyro with so much meat in it. They were stuffed full with what seemed like a half pound of meat. The gyro combo with fries and a drink was only $5.99. We all had one. We also got a order of a half pound of "fried gizzards". A first for me and Linda. My mother use to make gizzards in a gravy over rice, but never had them fried.
    Every morning the fairgrounds has coffee and donuts for us, plus a free Tampa newspaper. Thursday, Friday and Saturday there is also entertainment. We saw the Malt Shop Doo Wop group, a comedian and Ron and Kay Rivoli. We had met Ron  one day while walking around the show. One of our member we were with knew him and introduced us. He and his wife are also rv'ers. Starting April 1st they will be preforming in Branson for 7 months.

 

There was also a group of old RV's at the show. They were part of a group called the Tin Can Tourist.  More on this group and photo's in our next blog.