Yesterday, Melissa and I drove down a few miles west of Tampa to Plant City, where they have been holding their Florida Strawberry Festival. Naturally, strawberries are a big focus of the event, but as is the case with county fairs elsewhere, there's a lot going on. Rides, stands selling food of any kind you can imagine, and crafts exhibits dominate the landscape. Also, there's a stadium there where they hold concerts. That's convenient, because at 3:30 yesterday afternoon the Christian contemporary band MercyMe held a concert there that we attended. I've heard them before, especially that big hit of theirs If I Could Only Imagine from a few years back, but I didn't realize what good musicians they truly are. The selection of songs they performed during the slightly more than one hour they were up there went across the spectrum of musical styles...I was impressed! I'm going to have to get hold of some of their material to listen to on my MP3 player...
Yesterday morning before we set off, I checked out the Weather Channel website on my computer and it had for the Plant City forecast a 25% chance of "showers" and a high of 72. I looked at the radar map for central and northern Florida and saw a small band of clouds around the Tampa area, a very big clump of clouds heading for Gainesville...and a wide swath of clear skies in between. Instead, though...in the real world...it rained all the way from Gainesville to Plant City...and throughout almost the entire MercyMe concert. But speaking of "mercy", it did let up afterwards and Melissa and I spent the next hour or two walking around the fairgrounds...and of course we had to try out some strawberry shortcake! Also, there was a stand selling fresh-popped kettle popcorn...you can see above a picture of me holding my "prize catch".
Almost from the moment we got back into the car to drive back home, it had resumed raining...all the way back to Gainesville with only minor periods of respite. Well, the rain was tough, but the fair, and especially the company, was great!
Yesterday morning before we set off, I checked out the Weather Channel website on my computer and it had for the Plant City forecast a 25% chance of "showers" and a high of 72. I looked at the radar map for central and northern Florida and saw a small band of clouds around the Tampa area, a very big clump of clouds heading for Gainesville...and a wide swath of clear skies in between. Instead, though...in the real world...it rained all the way from Gainesville to Plant City...and throughout almost the entire MercyMe concert. But speaking of "mercy", it did let up afterwards and Melissa and I spent the next hour or two walking around the fairgrounds...and of course we had to try out some strawberry shortcake! Also, there was a stand selling fresh-popped kettle popcorn...you can see above a picture of me holding my "prize catch".
Almost from the moment we got back into the car to drive back home, it had resumed raining...all the way back to Gainesville with only minor periods of respite. Well, the rain was tough, but the fair, and especially the company, was great!
