Lakeland, TigerTown, and Tampa

We had a very nice time in Lakeland even if we did camp at an RV service shop.  Is it really “free” when you camp at a shop?.  Judging from our bill, it probably isn’t.  But just the same we got some very reasonable service work done at Fountain RV.

We toured Lakeland which really is a town built around a bunch of lakes.  One of the downtown lakes is the host of some very impressive gardens which we thoroughly enjoyed.   The picture to the right is Mirror Lake.  Our Lakeland pictures are at:   https://picasaweb.google.com/116107386675555024952/Lakeland

 

We toured “Tigertown” the spring training home of the Detroit Tigers and bought some tickets for a game.  Tigertown has a much better feel to it than Viera, the home of the Washington Nationals where we already had seen the Tigers play.  Lakeland and the Detroit Tigers have the longest spring training relationship of any city/team in baseball.  All of the surrounding diamonds of the complex are as immaculately groomed as Joker Marchant Stadium itself. 

The game itself was quite enjoyable.  The Tigers played the Phillies.  It was a “split squad” game as some of the Tigers were over playing the Yankees in Tampa at the very same time.  But we had Justin Verlander pitching, Prince Fielder playing first, and Jose Valverde pitching in relief so we had plenty of stars to watch.  The Tigers wound up winning, so they won both times that we saw them.  All of our spring training pictures are at:  https://picasaweb.google.com/116107386675555024952/SpringTraining

We also had a winning day in Tampa.  We stopped at Lazy Days, the largest RV dealer site in the world.  We took in Camping World and walked every single aisle as we always do to see the latest in RV trinkets.  We only bought one item, a tripod stand clothes drying rack.  It broke the first time we used it so back it is going to go.  We also walked some of the grounds at Lazy Days and viewed a few of their motor homes.  We always see some features we might like to have, but we come away very well satisfied that we purchased an excellent older motor home that stands up as great value for money when compared with the newer ones.  We took in a Latin restaurant in Tampa that had been recommended by the couple from Willow Lakes that we plan to visit in Maine this summer.  They served a huge amount of food at very reasonable prices.  And why was it a “winning” day?  On our way out of Tampa we stopped at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino where I won a net $100, more than covering all of our expenses of the day.

We had moved on to the Ocala/Gainesville area and will be reporting from there soon.