Starting the Year with a Focus on Community

One of the challenges I am constantly faced with is finding the balance between living life and documenting it, and the week we went to the Tampa RV show and the Tampa Campout was one of those weeks. In fact, we even missed the Campout’s group photo with everyone! Not to mention, we were still doing all the life and homeschool stuff this week.

About two weeks before attending the events, life shifted on us and we were still pivoting from that. But it allowed us to attend the Tampa Campout with Corey, Jess and family of Finding Our Someday and Nathan, Marissa and family of Less Junk, More Journey–two RV communities we have known and followed throughout our journey, even becoming friends with many fellow community members. (In fact, the Bible Study group I am in started from several of us in those communities).

The Campout was at the Lazy Days Campground (now Campers Inn) and we had the whole place to our group. There were gatherings, RVs to tour, nightly firepits, dinner, giveaways, a SeRV event to make birthday kits for a local food pantry, and lots of chances to just spend time in person with people we had met online.

BJ organized a dog parade with a couple dozen of our furry friends to walk around the campground together past our fellow campers. They did so well and were so adorable! I organized a trash pick up through the campground since we’d had some pretty windy days during our stay. We also made great use of the heated pool and hot tub on the property!

While there, we had lots of time to attend the Tampa RV Show. We went over for Industry Day to network with businesses, and tour RVs of course! We went back a couple other times, as well. We weren’t shopping for an RV now, but our youngest son aspires to travel in a camper van someday so he loves to get ideas, and we will eventually downsize ourselves when he is off on his own, so we get ideas. Then, there is just looking at the new features and designs. We loved seeing the truck campers, overlanders, the new techy RVs that are electronic, and I am loving the new fiberglass shell RV’s–what took the industry so long to go that route?!

We saw so many friends from years past and online, as well as meeting several new friends. We also got a chance to visit some friends in the area hosting some RVer friends at their home and were able to join a pot luck night.

Community is what RV life is all about, okay and traveling, so these events are such a great chance to connect while we are all gathered in the warm weather of the south for Winter.

One of our travel goals this year is to connect with friends and family more, so this January event started us off on that path. Don’t be surprised when more of our blog posts this year include people we are catching up with (as I write this, we are camping and exploring with some friends here for winter).

So what goals do you have for this year? We’d love to hear about them–whether they are travel and RV related, or not! If you do have RV and travel goals, be sure to check out our shop page for Our Travel Planner or The Essential Guide to RV Life, as well as our travel map linking you to blogs across the country.

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