Busy Day - Tampa RV Show

(Dover, FL) -- Hi 55 Lo 31 – We got up at 6am and on the road a little after 7 to head up to Lazy Days RV for our final warranty work on the RV.  Lazy Days is a huge RV dealer and they also repair hundreds of RV’s a day.  The traffic was worse than the last time but we got there before 9:00. This is their busiest time of the year and they were packed.  After we got signed in we then headed to the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa for the Florida RV Supershow.  It's the biggest RV show in the world.  At least that's what the show's organizers say.  The folks at the Hershey, PA RV Show say the same thing every year.  All I know is, this show is HUGE!


We met with a group of RV-Dreamers at a predesignated place at 11:00.  It was great seeing some old friends, and meeting people from the blogs and the forum.  Here are just a few who were there.
 
Charles and Sherri

Tony and Jackie

Stu, Froggi, and Donna (L to R)

We had lunch with the group and then left to go look at RV’s.  We went through many new rigs of all types, but we didn't see anything we'd take over ours.  There were a lot of people by late afternoon when it warmed up a bit.   We went through the vendor section, and we were a little disappointed.  It seemed most of the booths were for parks and resorts, and not as many accessories. 
One interesting design touch we saw in a fifth wheel was this strange looking sink faucet in the bathroom.  You manipulate the joystick and the water cascades down the little round thing and into the sink.  The salesman said most women don’t like it, but a lot of men do.  Maybe it's the "high tech" look of the joystick that appeals to the men.
We went back to Lazy Days around 3pm.  They were finished with our RV, so we hitched up and headed to Tampa East RV Resort in Dover, about four miles east of Lazy Days.  We’re spending a few days here to check it out as a possible option for next winter. The temperatures are a few degrees colder then where we are in Wauchula, but there’s so much more to do and see in this area.  It's a very large park, with lots of trees to maneuver around.  But the roads are paved, the sites are grass but level, and there are a lot of amenities.  We have a pull-through site, which is nice.  When we got positioned we hoped we had room for our full wall slide to come out without hitting this tree.  We didn't unhitch until we were sure it would make it.
  It cleared, good deal.

This situation caused us to do something we've always intended to do, but never seemed to get around to it.  We took the dowel stick we use to line up our truck when backing up to the hitch, and put a mark on it to measure the distance of our slide.  Now in the future we'll know for sure if we have room.

More pictures from around the park.  This is out our door.
 
The bath house across the street.

View to the right side

It’s a busy place.   This park is huge. 
As you can see, there are lots of trees, which we normally don't care for.  But the trees are spaced enough so we don't have a closed in feeling.  We didn't intend to set up the satellite dish on this trip (we get 35 channels from Tampa/St. Petersburg on our rooftop antenna!).  But Jim said he may try to set it up tomorrow just for the challenge of finding a "hole" through the trees to the open sky.

It’s been a long day. I’ve been good about losing weight and staying on a diet of healthy food and small portions.  Tonight I went all out. We were too tired to drive across Tampa eat with the RV-Dreams group, so we found a southern buffet nearby called Buddy Freddie’s.  What a great meal!
On the way out of the parking lot, we saw this odd looking vehicle.  Is it a car or motorcycle?  Jim said it looks like it was from that animated movie "Cars" a few years ago.
With full tummies and tired bodies we headed home.  On the way we saw this spectacular sunset.

It was one of those days I saw the sun come up and the sun go down.  Tomorrow we have more fun planned.