Tin Can Touring

Wanting to be somewhere that felt more like being in nature after our overpriced RV ‘resort’ stay in Spring Hill – we were able to snag 2 nights at nearby Hillsborough River State Park (click for our review on RVParking.com) just south of Zephyrhills, Florida.

This turned out to be a fabulous decision!  We had a lot of work to get done last week, and the park had perfect LTE signals for both AT&T and Verizon.

It was delightful to be parked with views of trees instead of our neighbor’s slide out.

And even more wonderful is a kayak launch right in the campground onto the Hillsborough River. We enjoyed taking an afternoon break for hikes and kayaking in the Sea Eagle.

Another spot opened up on ReserveAmerica for a third night that we were very tempted by, but as it would have required us moving spots – we figured we’d just head on up the road for the final 30 miles to the location of the Tin Can Tourist 93rd Annual Convention. Whether we’re moving 300 yards or 30 miles, it’s just about the same amount of effort.

Tin Can Tourist 93rd Winter Convention

As we were still on a tight deadline for a very intensive work project, our first two days at the convention were pretty much work days. Which is unfortunate, as I’m sure we missed out on some excellent social opportunities.

But, that’s one of the things us working-on-the-road folks have to balance. We try to look at it as an amazing opportunity to get to attend events like this as just part of our normal everyday life, and it not being a special occasion.

Instead of thinking…  ‘Damn, we have to work while we attend this event!’..
we instead say…

‘How cool that we get to attend this event without having to take vacation time!’

On Thursday evening, we were officially inducted as Tin Can Tourist members. We were taught the secret handshake, password and song.

On Friday afternoon we sent our work project off with time to spare – and we were free to let loose a bit and join the festivities. There was live music with dancing on Friday evening, and we were up late with a group of folks we befriended with a spontaneous drum circle. Lots of fun!

On Saturday was the open tours – which we were expecting to be more like what we experience at various bus rallies we attend. Something more casual, and mostly just showing off your rig to fellow attendees. Lots of time for getting to know our neighbors as we toured each other’s rigs.

We were quite taken by surprise by the number of folks who showed up for just the tour day.

By 11am, we had lines out the bus of folks waiting to tour, and it was non-stop into the afternoon. Wowzers!  It went by so quickly, and we felt we hardly got to really meet anyone. We gave out a lot of our cards, so hopefully some of y’all will virtually stop by and stay in touch!

Basically we were like a broken record repeating our introduction and story over and over and over again. There was no way one of us could break free to go touring the other trailers, as it took us both to manage the crowds. One of us stood outside and told the basic story of the bus while waiting for there to be room inside – while the other was inside giving a tour. Rinse, Repeat.

We enjoyed the rush quite a bit, we just weren’t expecting the day to be more like a RV show drawing in a public crowd. Hopefully we were able to impart some inspiration amongst the chaos. And our apologies to any blog readers who stopped by whom we were unable to take a few moments to chat.

We were starting to contemplate locking the bus up, putting a ‘closed’ sign on the door and going out touring trailers ourselves.

And then…  Mister Ed walked in.

No, Wilbur, not the horse.

Mister Ed contacted us about a year ago after tracking us down via a friend’s blogs, and seeing our bus on the road in Florida. He worked for Citizen Auto Stage in Arizona, the original owner of our bus, in the 70s and 80s. And get this.. he was the mechanic who took care of our Zephyr while she was a seated highway bus!

He completely took us by surprise by showing up to the TCT and walking into our living room!  Yeah… *swoon*!!

He spent a good bit of time with us checking her out, and sharing a bit of her history with us. We were a bit star struck to meet someone who knew our bus so intimately before she was ours, and getting in touch with such a large piece of her history. Totally an indescribable feeling.

Thank you Mister Ed, both for the surprise visit and for taking such good care of our bus that she’s still happily on the road!

Trailer Tours!

After Mister Ed headed on, we decided it was time to shut down our tours and go out touring ourselves. If you happened to be checking our Facebook feed at the time, then you might have seen our invitation to virtually join us for a live video tour (one of the benefits of having an iPad with unlimited data!).

Here’s some of the photos along the way…

And if you have an hour to kill, here’s an archive of the video tour we took of many of these trailers (including the interiors) :

Enjoy!

There were a little over 50 vintage RVs in attendance, so a pretty good showing.  We regret that there wasn’t time to get to nearly all of them.

The convention was held at the Sertoma Youth Ranch near Brooksville, which is a delightful festival park in the middle of a clump of beautiful oak trees.  The campground is situated around a covered stage area, with lots of space between the sites with electric and water hook-ups. During the weekends they host various festivals – ranging from things like the TCT event we were at, to music festivals or other gatherings. Quite a line up they have, and it’ll be on our list of places to return to.

We liked the park so much, we decided to extend our stay a couple nights and get some much needed chill time in after a busy week. Our new friends, Cherie & Carl (who own that 45′ trailer above) had flexibility to extend their stay as well. It has been super awesome to have more casual time continuing to get to know each other and plot future adventures.

As my father isn’t feeling up for travel yet, we’ll be heading to Melbourne this morning. Between wanting to be closer to the family and not wanting to continue fighting to find available ideal camping spots during Florida’s peak winter season – we’re looking forward to getting settled in for a bit. If you’ll be in the area over the coming months, get in touch – we love rendezvouses!