Day 13: Tampa Bay

Out of all first impressions that cities we visited on this trip made on us, Tampa Bay was one of the most memorable for all wrong reasons. Lucy put it best of us all when she said in the contrast to New York which is a city that never sleep, Tampa Bay is the city that always sleep.

It was very quiet and deserted. It got to a point where Richard and I made a bet that we had to dash around the RV to try to spot the first walker as we did not saw any people outside in first ten minutes. I eventually won the bet.

The weather was awful so it might have played a part in the deserted city. We were supposed to go to the beach but the plan had to be shelved. We decided to roll in the Wal-Mart car park to prepare for the overnight stay. We decided to go for a pointless wander in Wal-Mart due to lack of better options and it got to the point where I gained an exhaustive knowledge of the store and can easily direct people to cereal aisle or tell people how many calories that frozen pizzas have!

When we walked back to the RV, we discovered a bowling alley en-route so we all decided to go bowling. Soon as we walked back inside, it was as if we were transported back to the eighties because the décor was really drab and the equipment was ancient. The arcade machines were all dated as well. Richard won in our group and Stuart had a last gasp victory in the other group. We all then enjoyed arcade machines especially the basketball one where I got the highest score of all.

We went back and had our dinner before playing Monoploy. Stuart went out for fresh air and found a sign saying that any overnight campers will be fined as Tampa Bay recently banned freedom camping. We hastily drove to first RV campsite we found where we had to wake the owner up which annoyed him and Richard did not help the matters when he kept mishearing the directions to our bay and kept on asking for clarifications. He give us the most evilest of the evil eye in the history as we finally drove off!