Tampaventure (2017)

Welp, the image above just about says it all. Our friends Brett and Rayla used to live in Tampa, so we decided to pay them a visit and check out the scene. Here are the highlights!

Obviously, we had to go to Gatorland - when in Rome and all that jazz. As you can imagine, it was very hokey. And it was super hot - you can see how hot those gators are in the pictures. There was a gator wrestling show, some parrots, and a couple of very overweight panthers (poor things, they really shouldn't be kept in small enclosures). It was quite the experience.

Our other major event was going to a Rays game. Because we were pretty much the first car to arrive at Tropicana, we got free parking. The ballpark is... quaint. We sat behind a very enthusiastic baseball dad - when he found out it was our first time, he very excitedly told us about how it goes crazy when someone hits a home run. So we crossed our fingers and hoped we'd be lucky enough to experience the magic. A home run was, indeed, hit, which meant that the orange juice lights by the scoreboard went drip, drip, drip, splash! Which was cute, don't get me wrong, but wasn't what I would call "going crazy".

On our final day, we went for a walk by the ocean. Have I mentioned how hot it was? Unfortunately, the combination of heat and a sugary alcoholic beverage got to us a bit - eventually, we wound up going to a Hooters to enjoy the A/C. The servers forgot our food, but what can you do? At least we escaped the heat!