Celebrity Citing at Rv Show

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 68, low 50)

The cold front arrived yesterday, bringing some wind and rain as it came through.  It got down to 41 degrees last night.

After weeks of 80+ temps and lots of sun, we chose the first windy, rainy, cool day to go to the Tampa Rv show.  It figures.  :)

Dee, from Tumbleweed, organized a get together at the Rv show for some bloggers and others who have known each  other from chat rooms.

I guess about 45 people showed up.  I didn’t bring my camera, but we sure enjoyed meeting other rv bloggers.

I  really enjoyed meeting Tom and Marci from Roaming Free 2010. They fulltime with their boys,  who are home schooled.  I thought that was such an interesting life for these kids and picked her brain a little. Homeschooling is not like I thought it was.  She is not personally teaching them. They learn from the internet and dvd’s. I wonder how long until regular schools will be obsolete.  They are currently work camping here in Florida.  I had come across their blog several times before, but had neglected to add it to my blogroll, so I wasn’t keeping up with them.  I’ve since added it and will go back and see where they’ve been.  Nice to meet you Marci and Tom!

We also got to meet Elaine and Rick for the first time.  Elaine is a very nice person and her concern when our kitty Chatty was sick, was very much appreciated!  We may just see them again in the next few weeks.  They are near where we’ll be going for groceries when we’re camped in the  prairie next week.

We also got to see Donna again.  Her blog is Adventures With Tassie.  She showed Al the scars from her two knee replacement surgeries.  He may be in for a knee replacement in the future.  Hope to see you again soon Donna!

We knew we had to meet Jim and Judy from The Meandering Maddoxs.  Jim surprised us a while back by sending us a copy of Adele’s new Cd “21.”  What a surprise that was and it was very much appreciated.  Nice to meet  you both.  We hope to see you again before you head back to Georgia.

Another blogger we met was Joe, from Joes Journeys.  Nice to meet you Joe.  We’ll put you on the blogroll too so that we don’t miss any more of your posts.

We didn’t get to see much of the Rv show, so we’re going back today.  We went into one very shiny high end Prevost.  It had the shiny high gloss cabinets, mirrored ceilings and white leather furniture.  It was NOT my kind of Rv and if we won the lotto, we wouldn’t even buy it then.  It was very pretty outside though.

We had gotten a blog comment from Page wanting to meet us while they were in town.  She and her husband were driving in from South Carolina to do some preliminary shopping for their full time rig.  We met up with them and looked at a couple of Airstream trailers with them.  They really the Airstreams, but they are just at the beginning of their search.  Page has almost got a blog started.  She went so far as to reserve the name.  She needs some encouragement to get one started!   I told her we all love to read about people that are preparing to become fulltimers!  We all decided we were hungry so we suggested Sweet Tomato’s.  They are vegan too, so that worked out well.  We stuffed our faces, and had some good conversation.  We hope to see you guys again down the road!

So…..you’re probably wondering who the celebrity was that we saw yesterday?

Why, it was Al.

When we were sitting with the Tumbleweed group, Al was flipping through the Rv show booklet and I happened to notice a familiar looking photograph.

It was a picture that I had taken about a year ago kayaking in the Keys.

Remember this photo?

 

Encore/Thousand Trails puts out a quarterly magazine.  They have a little photo contest quarterly.  If you submit a photo taken while camping at one of their parks, you can win $50 (if I remember correctly) and they will publish your photo.

Well, I submitted this photo, signed over my rights to it and sure enough it won and was published in their magazine.  It’s pretty cool to see one of your photos in a magazine.

Well, imagine my surprise yesterday when we saw this same photo in the magazine the Rv show hands out at the door.

Imagine my surprise again when we went to the Encore/Thousand Trails booth at the Rv show and saw my photo blown up, put on fabric and covering some “walls.”

Here is Al the celebrity standing in front of one of the photographs.

No, that is not the same shirt.

There were at least 4 different places there that had this same photo.

 

 

So Mr. Al is now a celebrity.  If anyone wants an autograph, I’ll see what I can do.  :)

We’re off to go back to the Rv show again.  We picked up a few free camping deals and some show “treasures.”  I’ll tell you about them tomorrow!