Florida

Having spent 2 days at the dog shows in Portland we flew to Tampa on Saturday as we were both judging on the final day of the 10 day Florida circuit. An early start, through Denver and then on to Tampa and collected the rental car and drove north to Brooksville, where the cluster is held. This group of clubs have purchased their own grounds (and actually had a mortgage burning ceremony the previous day!) The grounds are huge and filled with motor homes and have all sorts of amenities including an ATM. The judges were spoilt with excellent meals, cooked to order breakfasts and lovely tasty lunches, all provided in a tent with artificial grass underfoot and heaters, should they be needed. Fortunately the fact I had taken my raincoat, meant that the weather was lovely and got up to about 65 - there were a couple of sprinkles of rain, but they quickly passed. The quality of the dogs was good and there were not many absentees, either.
On Sunday night we drove to Orlando, as we were planning to spend the day at Disney World, but when we got up on Monday it was rainy and overcast, so we decided to have a lazy day and cruise the outlet malls.Then in the late afternoon we decided to go to Celebration - which is a planned community (built by none other than the Disney corporation in the 1990's) and have a look and have dinner there. It was a very nice area with lots of amenities around a central lake.
On Tuesday we drove around the area and then it was back to Tampa, so we were close to the airport for an early flight out Wednesday morning. We decided to go for a drive to a restaurant, west of Tampa on the Intracoastal waterway - and we chose the Salt Rock Grill and had a great meal of Stone Crab Claws
I followed mine with Grouper and David had Tuna - delicious - we love our seafood! Today was a long day, with lots of airline food...