Depressing in Tampa East

Some people have a level problem!

HI, my name is Richard. I am retired. I am 52 years old… 53 in a week! (I haven’t post for so long, I thought I should introduced myselfL)

I could come up with thousand excuses, (after all I am a man) but I’ll just skip ahead like if nothing happened…

Just a quick recap… We Returned to Florida on January 4th. We were greeted at the airport by André who had volunteered to pick us up on our return. It was past midnight, we just went back to our trailer in Tampa. The trailer was in the overflow and was happy to see us back.

The following day, we moved the trailer to our assigned spot. Now, I am the kind of person who looks at the glass as being half full, but there was nothing in that campground for us...

The noise from the highway was constant and loud (24 hours a day). I souldn’t complain, once in a while we couldn’t hear the noise, it was overtaken by an chopper that was landing very close by.

We were parked under big trees and lets just say, the sun was not shinning on us! Strangely, the tree leaves were falling, for crying loud, can someone tell me since when do trees lose there foliage in the middle of winter? I hate to compare but in Canada, we trained our trees to loose there leaves in the fall.

The ground was dirt with a carpet of leaves, no grass, no cement pad, just a place in the deep dark shade. The back of the trailer was only a few inches off the ground where the front was a few feet.  If you didn't get that description… it means we were parked on a slope!  Nothing levelled  here and as if that was not enough, there were roots running all over the site.  I’m surprised we didn’t trip and break our neck. It seems to me that a stay at a nearby hospital would have been a big improvement.

Do you think that I’m done with the whining… NO! We also had guests, ants that is! Boy those guys can sure walk in a straight line,  I served in the army and I can tell you that we were not that disciplined! Now don’t tell on me, but I poisoned them. Whouhahaha maybe the ants were there just to distract us so we would stop looking at our poor living conditions.

No I’m not done yet… behind us, there was a small ditch with stagnant water, a nice greenish glow was emanating from it, needless to says we stayed away from that ditch!

Almost done but stay tuned… across that ditch, a busy RV store. They had a loud PA system that kept going on all day: “Roger please come to the front desk”, “Jim please flush the toilet”, “Jane please pick  up line 1”… on and on and on. I don’t really know if they were that successful  a business or pretending to be busy but they kept moving thosetrailers with the tractor…

Last comment, location, location, location!  It was not there. To get anywhere we were always stuck in traffic, it was minimum one  hour to go do the groceries.

If you are travelling, and what I described is what you are looking for, just book at Tampa East RV resort, specially to their Palm lot. I don’t know why, but there are people there that keep coming back every year for the winter… just to tell you, they won’t have to over bid me for it, I’ll gladly let them have the whole place. We had payed for 2 months in advance but when I went to the office and told them we were leaving at the end of January, they refunded me.



For the month of January, we didn’t do much (other than complain). Hockey was in lockout but relatively close by, the players from the Tampa’s Lighting were practicing. We were lucky enough to see  Vincent Lecavalier, Martin St-Louis and many more there.

Martin St-Louis
No he is not waving at ME :(
 

A "montreal Fan" watching the enemy practice. Notice the Nordique sign on his purse... maybe he is a "hidden Nordique fan"

At the same level as the players... but we are retired, they have to go to work now... Who is the winner?
 

We also attended the Tampa RV show, I think it is one of the biggest in the state… it’s so big that they have shuttles going around. It was crowded, not only with people, but animals too. Please if you have a pet, leave it at home, it will be much better off than being in an event like that one.

Well that was January, a month that I would like to erase from my memory. We were even thinking that the snow and the cold back home was not that bad after all… but February is a completely different story, you will have to tune in the next few days to find out!

The next picture is to give you a taste of what is coming J
 
P.S. This post happened because of Hugo's begging, who couldn't man up anymore and was on the verge of blog withdrawal.  (Note from Christiane: Actually Hugo, you gave Richard the spark to start on his blog again)

 

Howard Park
I was lucky, I found a free parking spot right by the gulf!