Tampa RV Show, Strawberry Shortcake & Friends

We left the camper early Wednesday morning and drove about an hour west to the Tampa RV Show.  This is one of the biggest RV shows in the country.  The tickets serve as a two-day pass.  We spent the first day looking around at all the new motorhomes and even looked at some of the new fifth wheelers.  We're not looking to trade or switch back to a fifth wheel but we always like to look at the new features and layouts.

Montie and Ann, our friends from our Defeated Creek camping days, invited us over for dinner Wednesday night.  We got to see their beautiful new house and Ann fixed us a delicious dinner of spaghetti and meatballs.  They taught us a new card game and we even got in a game of SkipBo Ann and I beating Montie and Chuck....again...like last year.  :)

We went back to the RV show on Thursday and spent the day visiting all the vendor booths.  We didn't really see any new products this year that we were interested in but I picked up a lot of campground and resort information.  We did buy an "As-Seen-on-TV" food chopper that Chuck is anxious for us to try out for making homemade salsa.  We also talked to the Tire Minder sales rep about the problems we were having with our monitor not holding a signal when disconnected from the charger.  The sales rep told us he would give us a new one if we would bring him our old tire monitor.  We weren't planning on coming back to the RV show but he said we could also take it to their office in Stuart, Florida, .

After we left the show on Thursday, we stopped by the Parkesdale Farm Market for a strawberry shortcake.  At first, I think Chuck thought I should order two, but after I got the shortcake, he remembered how big they were and was glad I just bought one for us to split.  We also got a strawberry shake to split later after dinner.  Both were delicious!  :)

On Friday, we drove around checking out other campgrounds in the area and further south on Hwy 27.  Later in the day, we decided to take the tire monitor back to Tampa to the RV show to get the new one that the sales rep from Tire Minder said he would give us.  We thought we might have to pay for admission and parking again; but since it was so late in the day, the RV Show didn't charge us for parking or admission (which saved us $26).

On Saturday, we drove over to Palm Bay to visit our friend John from Maine.  We had a nice visit with John and he took us to lunch at Young's Buffet.  We hadn't eaten Chinese in a long time and it was very good.  We just ate too much!  After lunch, John drove us through this neighborhood near him that has wild peacocks living there.

Aren't they beautiful?  I think peacock blue is one of the prettiest colors there is.  We were hoping to see one of the male peacocks spread its feathers but no luck today.

It was a very busy few days but we were so glad to get to see and visit with our friends that we hadn't seen since last year.  Next, we head back north to Wildwood to get some yearly maintenance work done on the motorhome.