Tampa Florida – Day 1

My pals Dave Y, Randy A and I loaded up my truck with Heartland Owners Club booth supplies and headed over to Lazy Days RV sales center for breakfast. It’s costing us $52 per night for nice FHU/paved sites and it includes breakfast and lunch each day we’re here. Breakfast was decent – we had scrambled eggs, 2 sausage links, corned beef hash, coffee and juice.

After breakfast, we headed over to the Florida State Fairgrounds to audit all the Heartland Owners Club volunteer badges and to pick ours up. Then we made our way over to the Heartland display and got our 10×10 EZ-Up shelter put up, our table setup and our banner displayed. Mike P from Heartland was there to lend us a hand as well.

At lunch time, along with a group of Heartlanders, we ate over at Lazy Days RV sales center. We had chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, corn and a drink. We’d planned to head over to Dover, FL to Parksdale Farms Market for “the best” Strawberry Shortcake. We knew other club friends, Ron and Ann P were staying at a campground near there, so Dave Y phoned them up and they met us there.

Oh my gosh – yumo!

Yesterday, I hatched a plan to have a potluck dinner over at Randy and Santha’s. Tonight, it all came together. I believe there were 16 of us. I even invited a security guard from Lazy Days to join us before her shift started. We had a very nice meal and great conversation. We also had a lively discussion on where we should camp next year during the show as $52 per night here at Lazy Days is really getting a bit steep. We may move down the road a bit. Dave Y and Julie H checked out 3 campgrounds. We believe we’ve narrowed it down to a single finalist and we’ll open talks with them this week.