Supershow time!

Every year in January at the State Fairgrounds in Tampa is held the largest RV show in the US, and probably the world.  Jan and I try to do a whirlwind visit on opening day every year.  This makes about the 10th time we've been.  It is something to behold, not only 3 buildings full of vendors, but hundreds of RV's in every shape and size.  From Prevost conversions and Newells that cost upwards of $2.5 million, yeah really, to the tiniest of teardrop trailers, popups, and trailers with Class A's, B's, and C's, fifth wheels, toy haulers, etc. in between.  Every manufacturer is represented, and other than the Prevosts you can inspect and experience every one.  I think you need a secret handshake for the Prevosts:-)  Actually you can go on them as well, you just need an appointment.

It is an extraordinary opportunity to look at every shape and size and type of RV, so if you are in the market there is no better place to do your preliminary study.  And if you are like us and not in the market for anything, you can stroll around the vendors, asking questions, getting all sorts of information, and maybe come away with a bunch of "stuff". We like to poke our heads into several coaches to see any new ideas, and seeing if there are any that catch our eye.  We had an interesting encounter with Mike Snell, the president of Monaco and Holiday Rambler now under the umbrella of ASV, Allied Specialty Vehicles, the parent of Fleetwood and American Coach.  Since we have a old time Monaco built coach we are always interested in what the latest iteration of Monaco looks like.  So as we were poking around in one of the new 2015 Monaco Dynastys, we were asked how we liked it by one of the, we thought, sales people.  We responded that we were old Monaco customers and we liked the "real" Monacos better.  He asked us why so we said it seemed they had taken lots of the storage out in exchange for bath and a half models, and there were many examples of doing things differently that we weren't impressed with.  Well it turned out the "salesman" was Mike Snell, and to his credit he showed us the better points of one of the model's galley areas and we had to admit that there was quite a bit of ingenuity in its design, and not to his credit he kind of blew off my questions about the new spot for the batteries and the inaccessibility of working on them.

We looked at some new Entegras, American coaches, and a couple Newmars, and decided we had seen enough.  We went back to the vendors and picked up something I've been looking at for some time, a light for our flagpole.  We love to fly the flag and we know it needs to be lit at night, so we have kind of cheated by putting a cheap little solar landscaping light in the end of the pole above the flag and called it lit.  In reality it is a pretty tiny light.  So we bought a real solar flag light, a disc that mounts above the flag and actually illuminates it.  It looks good!

So after flying around the tons of displays and vendors we left a bit after noon after speaking with Creative Coach, a RV collision repair and renovation company in Lakeland, FL that has a stellar reputation.  We need a bit of repair to be done after our encounter with the hail last spring, and a damaged wheel well from hitting the tire on a precarious uphill tight turn out of a driveway that will remain nameless:-)  It's pretty much fixed now I might add.  So they suggested that we would be better off to go visit the shop itself to go over our pictures of the damage and they could give us an estimate.  

Our wheel well oops

Our hail damage

Our friend Harvey had told us about a not to miss place along the way, Parkesdale Market.  They are the largest Strawberry and Citrus Market in Florida and harvest more than 3 million pounds of strawberries each year, but more importantly Harvey told us they had the best strawberry shortcake and milkshakes in the world.  So we checked it out, and found out it is absolutely true!  The strawberry milkshake might have been the best milkshake I have ever had, period, not just the best strawberry milkshake, and the shortcake was superb.  

Man it was good!

If you are ever out on I-4 near Plant City put a visit on your list, but they only serve the shortcake January through mid-April.  They also have a fantastic produce stand.  So after a delicious lunch of shortcake and milkshake we visited Creative Coach.  We got our estimate, talked a lot about what needed to be done and how they would do it, and ended up making an appointment to get all fixed up, and also plan to have them recover our captain's chairs that are needing attention as well.