A Facebook ad popped up for a Tiny House Expo in Pinellas Park, so we took a day to go visit. We had become Harvest Host members and I found a HH bar in downtown St. Pete I was able to make a reservation for. The deal with Harvest Hosts, at least at the time, was you could park for free (some with hookups, some not) as long as you spent at least $20 at the host. It was a bar, so of course we could. I think now the “suggestion” is $30. There was also a Class A there, but we never did see its occupants.
The Tiny House expo was neat, although nothing really grabbed our attention. We had been thinking about having a tiny house put on the river lot for us. The neatest thing we saw was a DIY bus conversion that was top notch.
We spent the night at the bar (that doesn’t quite sound right) with a view of Tropicana Field right there. The next day we went to what was my old haunt, “The Pier” in downtown St. Pete, but it had been completely rebuilt since I had been there before. It was completely unrecognizable at this point. There used to be a grill/bar on the roof of the old Pier and now it was some fancy restaurant. Meh.
There was a neat aquarium about halfway down.
After exploring St. Pete for the day, I remembered there was a beach off the rest stop exit for the Sunshine Skyway bridge and back in the day, you could park on nearly any beach in your car and spend the night. (I moved to Florida at 18 and spent my formative young adult years in the Tampa Bay/Clearwater area, in case I hadn’t mentioned that). Now we had a fully self-contained van, so why not try that?!
We parked and broke out glasses of wine to enjoy the sunset. There was a sprinkling of other cars and campers there. I was prepared for a fantastic beachside night. However, immediately as the sun was setting, an FHP trooper drove through and broadcast on his speaker, “Everyone clear out! There is no camping here!” Boooo!
Reluctantly, we packed up and just drove the 1.5 hours home. Luckily, we hadn’t gotten too far into that wine.
