The Tin Can Tourists is an organization dedicated to preserving the history of vintage RVs. They host rallies and gatherings across the country, and we were inducted as members last year during their 93rd convention in Brooksville, Florida. We had a great time, and made a lot of new friends.
The timing worked out for us to attend this year – and thankfully, we remembered the secret handshake, so they let us return!
But given that our big new project has reached a point of requiring really long days on our part, we were mostly shut-ins focused on our task at hand.
We were able to take a break and open up our vintage bus home for a couple hours on Saturday for tours during the open house.
We did manage to get out and about a little to tour a few trailers and take some snapshots. Here’s a slideshow of some of the fun vintage RVs present:
We also ended up being part of the entertainment two of the evenings.
On Friday night, they brought in some musicians for dancing, and they were quite easy going guys. I love fire dancing to live music, and they seemed quite intrigued by the idea. We had a great time entertaining together for the group!
The rest of the evening, Chris and I totally got our dance groove on!
On Saturday night, there was no entertainment in the plans – and we just had to fix that.
Our friend’s Carl & Cherie (pronounced ‘Sherry’, unlike my name of the same spelling) have an incredibly awesome 1953 Pontiac Chief trailer.
And we had the Lucy & Desi movie The Long Long Trailer and a projector.
Can you guess where this is going?!?
Yup, just how often can you watch ‘The Long Long Trailer on a Long Long Trailer’? Especially a trailer of the same vintage of the movie!
The organizer, Forrest Bone, was all over our witty initiative and announced it to the group – voila, instant evening full of laughter with new friends!
On Sunday morning, most everyone pulled out .. but we stuck around for the day to enjoy some quiet time with Sertoma Youth Ranch nearly to ourselves. We even ducked down to the little town of San Antonio, FL last night to have some of the best tacos we’ve ever had at Pancho Villa. Oh, yum.
What’s Next? We’re headed out this morning for some much overdue alone time (for real this time!) this week. But no rest for us. We’ll be hyper focused on the exciting new, still secret, project and working long, long hours.
Well…! We were hoping to finally meet you February 11 at Sunset Isle (one of our favorites, by the way – thanks for outing it!). But that’s ok. We still had our favorite site 3 with poor cable but a great vew and fried oysters and grits in Cedar Key – plus great pancakes in the cafe the next morning! – and you had a much-needed vacation. We’ll catch you down the road. I hope you enjoy your travels as much as I enjoy following them.
BTW, we stopped and admired your bus, never realizing it was yours!
Vicki in Venice (FL)
Oh gosh.. how funny that you saw the bus, but didn’t realize it was ours! Glad you enjoyed Cedar Key!
I really enjoyed this post – especially the 45 foot trailer. We watched your youtube as well. Can you imagine towing such a thing? Then I googled on the Pontiac Chief trailer and found this site which is cool: http://portablelevittown.blogspot.com/
The history of travel trailers is so interesting. Thank you for this entertaining and informative post. Happy travels.
Their trailer is so cool… but wow, I wouldn’t want to pull that thing around. The places they can go with it are rather limited.
The vintage trailers have so much character. I love the pics. This is the second time I’ve heard of The Long Long Trailer movie so now its on my list of ones to watch.
Oh gosh yes… you guys just missed the showing we did at Cedar Key. I can’t believe we watched it twice in a row and laughed our butts off both times – I hardly ever watch movies twice. Definitely add it to your watch list, any RVer will laugh and grimmace.
Pancho Villas is also our favorite restuarant! looks like you had a great time! Start ‘volunteering’ at Myakka River SP 1 March.
It is so yummy… probably our favorite Mexican food outside of Texas!
Enjoy Myakka River SP, we hear it’s lovely down there.
Super cool idea with the projector on the long trailer. What a blast! Wanted to let you know 1st three pics didn’t show up on my e-mail feed. That might be deliberate, but wanted to let you know just in case it wasn’t.
Enjoy your solo time!
Nina
Oops..just the first two pics didn’t show up. Everything else, plus all the writing did 🙂
Thanks Nina – by the ‘first two photos’, are you referencing the header top ‘featured’ photo (the one with the two little trailers) and the photo slide show? If so, totally expected on a RSS delivery, there was a link to the slideshow in the e-mail version that came through on ours.
Cool posting! Looks like some of the vintage autos are as awesome as the vintage RVs. Any pics of the interiors of these beauties?
Unfortunately, we had very little time to tour much ourselves this year. But last year we did a live video walk-thru of many of them – you can find the archive on our YouTube channel.
Thanks for sharing another great get together, Hopefully we will meet you two and experience all in person someday soon. Going fulltime this year if all goes as planned!
Greg & Margie
Sending you guys lots of positive support in hitting the road! See you out there…