I am always encouraged when I hear someone say, “My parents read your blog every day.” I hear this comment all the time from friends that we’ve either camped with or who have given us courtesy parking. \u00a0 I don’t know why this tickles me, but it does. \u00a0 Today Susan told me her mother reads the blog because it gives her a sense of what’s up with Susan and Adam while they are traveling with us. \u00a0 Welcome aboard, Mrs. W! \u00a0 My parents read the blog, too.<\/p>\n
We are in Tampa for a few days of urban recreation. \u00a0 Our recent travels through state parks (in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida) have rubbed off on Adam and Susan, and now they want to spend more time in state parks and eschew the commercial campgrounds they used to frequent. \u00a0 So now that we’ve arrived at a very comfortable Tampa RV resort, they are \u00a0 anxious to \u00a0 get back into Florida’s state park system. \u00a0 I have to admit that Florida state parks are among the best in the nation, and we’re only slightly blas\u00c3\u00a9 about being in them because we’ve visited so many over the years.<\/p>\n
But instead of rushing off to another state park, we are taking in those things that are uniquely suburban Florida, and one of those things is the ubiquitous Florida Flea Market. \u00a0 These things are all over the state, and many are huge. \u00a0 Just down the road from our campsite in the town of Oldsmar is one of the biggest.<\/p>\n
The flea markets are riddled with Chinese knock-offs (sunglasses, toys, tools), questionable antiques, bad food, and sleazy DVDs, but they often also feature great used-book stores, fresh fruit stands, and the occasional genuine bargain. \u00a0 You’ve got to browse the entire thing to find the few diamonds in the dustheap, which is part of the fun. \u00a0 For me, the other part of the fun is getting some kettle corn or a bag of Florida citrus and eating it as I browse.<\/p>\n
Emma is, of course, not particularly interested in flea markets, but it was a good place for her to collect a few ingredients for her magic wand. \u00a0 The kit she received for her birthday includes a 24-page instruction book with many dire warnings about the risks of making a wand improperly, so she wants to do it right. \u00a0 The interior of the wand must be filled with a personalized mixture of crushed stones, feathers, sand, glass beads, and other items. \u00a0 She bought malachite and moonstone for her wand, and collected some pure white sand from the ground.<\/p>\n
She takes it so seriously that I am tempted to ask her if she understands it’s all in fun, but I don’t want to ruin it for her. \u00a0 I think magic wands fall in the same category as Santa Claus. \u00a0 I’m pretty sure she realized Santa wasn’t real a couple of years ago, but she won’t let on that she knows because it would spoil the fun. \u00a0 And we pretend she doesn’t know, because we don’t want to end it either. \u00a0 (Those of you who are adults reading this: If I just disillusioned you, never mind. Santa is<\/em> real.)<\/p>\n With Adam and Susan we have discovered the joy of making pizza on the grill. \u00a0 Eleanor bought a bunch of little flatbreads at the supermarket and in the afternoon Adam grilled up a bunch of vegetables (Portabello mushrooms, eggplant, onions, etc) and assembled a variety of ingredients, including fresh tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato sauce, Kalamata olives, olive tapenade, \u00a0 Gorgonzola cheese, mixed shredded cheese, fresh pears, raspberries, walnuts, dark chocolate, Amaretti cookies, roasted red peppers and roasted green peppers.<\/p>\n This is a lot of fun. \u00a0 You cover a flatbread with a mix of ingredients and slide it onto the hot grill for a few minutes, then slice it up and let everyone try it. \u00a0 Since the pizzas are small and the crusts are thin & crispy, you can try a lot of different pizzas before you get full. \u00a0 We took turns creating new pizza mixtures, finally ending up with a few “dessert pizzas” featuring chocolate bits, pear, cookie bits, and yogurt. \u00a0 This is a great thing to do with a crowd, since everyone can contribute to the cooking, even kids, and the new pizzas just keep coming out every 2-3 minutes.<\/p>\n As it got dark, I brought out the uke and Adam broke out his bongos, and we experimented briefly with the concept of a uke\/bongo combo. \u00a0 There’s some potential there, but I’ll have to get better at different strumming patterns. \u00a0 When I say “potential” I mean potential to make some interesting (to us) music, and potential to drive away unwanted neighbors in the campground. \u00a0 If ukulele is an un-acquirable taste, as my curmudgeonly friend Dr C claims, uke\/bongo must certainly fall into the same category as our pear and Gorgonzola pizza: strange-sounding but really delicious if you try it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am always encouraged when I hear someone say, “My parents read your blog every day.” I hear this comment all the time from friends that we’ve either camped with or who have given us courtesy parking. \u00a0 I don’t know why this tickles me, but it does. \u00a0 Today Susan told me her mother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}