‘Cause we got a little convoy
Rockin’ through the night.
Yeah, we got a little convoy,
Ain’t she a beautiful sight?
Come on and join our convoy
Ain’t nothin’ gonna get in our way.
We gonna roll this truckin’ convoy
‘Cross the U-S-A.
Convoy!
— C. W. McCall
Sometimes, Lisa and I do things a little backwards. Not as bad as cart then horse, but sometimes close. The way that the majority of the public goes about purchasing an Recreational Vehicle (RV) or Camper or Travel Trailer is to go to an RV show and check them out. And then either make the deal there or head home do some more research online and then drive to their local dealer and finally try and get their local dealer to match a better price than a different dealer who has the same model. For Lisa and I, we hit the Internet and decided on the class B we wanted based largely on size and floor plan and then found a dealer and told them what our magic price would be and they eventually met us. So going to an RV show was a ‘first’ for us.
We arrived at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa for the RV Supershow which is the largest RV show in the country boasting over 70k attendees. We were surprised to see just as many people camping in their rigs outside of the fairgrounds as there were inside on display. Evidently this is the show to meet up with your fellow RV’ers. We are here to track down members of the Winnebago Travato Facebook (FB) group. There were all types of RVs from pop-ups to small travel trailers to van conversions to bus conversion luxury motorhomes costing over a million $. Quite the sight to see, so many people and so many rigs. It must have been very tiring for some attendees as around a 1/2 of the RVs we went in and explored had some other attendee trying out the bed. Kind of strange walking into one and finding a husband and wife fully clothed crashing on the bed.
Our camping convoy wound up being around 13 Travatos that traveled from all over the country for this annual meet-up. Winnebago even sponsored a dinner for the group to get feedback and ideas for future models. Met some interesting and friendly folks- even a guy from NOLA who brought a King Cake to share with the group. At the dinner, the Winnebago product group did several exercises in which we were able to constructively comment on their existing Travato and build our dream rig. It was very cool to participate in this interaction with them. The next morning we hung out with our new Travato friends and compared mods (modifications) that we had made to our rigs and then we hit the road. We only attended the show on Friday and left the super Saturday and Sunday crowds to others. 🙂
On our way to Sanibel Island we had what is reported to be the best Grouper Sandwich in Florida at Casey Key Fish House & Tiki Bar which is an old Florida style restaurant on the water in Osprey near Sarasota. This was the freshest fish sandwich we’ve ever had!
