Clermont, FL - New RV Anyone?

As you can guess from the title above, we went to the Tampa RV show, self-described as the world’s largest. And, they certainly had a lot of RV’s to look at. But, on the other hand, it’s just fun to roam around, people watch and just take an opportunity get out of the RV and into the world. We cruised all the vendors and the food court, we watched the pot and pan demonstrator fry up some stir fry, we listened to a little entertainment, we sat on a ledge drinking out coffee and people watched and we asked questions of those quite a few vendors. This is a great place to get information about products we have in our RV - like the Freightliner chassis and those products we might like to put into the RV - like a new central vac. 

But, we also spent some time touring the new RV's - wondering which ones we liked enough to keep in mind for - maybe 3 or 4 years in the future. We liked this retro Winnebago.

Here’s an interesting placement of a chair - right in front of the fireplace and no place else to move it. Not only that but it's in the middle of the conversation between those in the front seats and those on the sofa. Huh? (Maybe that's why it's a swivel rocker.)

We saw one Rv with the kitchen right in back of the driver’s seat. You could actually sit down on the driver’s chair and stir your soup on the stove. Then came the living room and the TV, further back in the RV. In this floorplan, the navigator and driver’s seats were absolutely useless for conversation. But, in the end, we decided that our RV suited us fine. Of course, we weren’t in the market for a new RV but it is always fun to see what is out there.

We left the show at 5:00 to drive the 12 miles to Plant City where they not only have delicious fruits and vegetables to buy but they also serve some absolutely marvelous strawberry desserts - at least that’s what our friends, Shirley and Jerry said. We were plenty sceptical and thought we ought to verify for ourselves. The place closes at 6:00 but we thought we had plenty of time to make it. Wrong. We met a terrible trio of events that kept us on the road for 53 minutes. Rush hour traffic, Friday evening traffic and people leaving the RV show all combined to make that 12 mile take 52 minutes - we were doing 4 minute miles. Runners could have beaten us. we kept looking at our GPS to see what time it estimated that we would arrive. Here we are 5.6 miles out and it’s telling us that we’ll get there at 5:48.

Finally we got there about 5:55, I rushed in while Gary parked the car and scanned the menu. I chose this wonderful concoction and we sat down to eat - the last ones who got served - just in time. After we had finished this delicious sundae, Gary asked: ‘did we get any whipped cream?’ I guess we ate it petty fast.

They were still cleaning up when we left and I asked if I could buy that wonderful looking spaghetti squash. Sure, she said. I handed over my money, stuffed it into the car and we got home about 7:45. Ooops, that’s a honey dew melon. And, I had just bought a cantaloupe at the grocery store.