FL Vacation - any tips from locals?

appyfan

I'm from NC & will heading down to FL with my BF the first weekend of March for a week (woohoo!!) It's going to be a bit tricky as we will be staying with his mom & younger sister. I've never met either & don't want to walk in the door with hordes of foods i'll need to get through a week. This is also my first vacation in seven years, so I know i'll be doing some splurging. There will be plenty of opportunity for me to be pretty active. I plan on going sight seeing in the horsey parts of Ocala, the horse park, we're going to the aquarium, universal studio, going the motorcycle track, & i'm going to take a day to go explore the fauna in some of the nearby nature parks.

We're going to be staying around the Lakeland area, I will be taking a small cooler for the drive down & probably a bag of shelf stable snacks for just in case. Any suggestions from locals on restaurants to hit up that have fairly good foods? I know my bf probably knows where all the awesome tasting, but bad food places are & i'm sure we'll hit up some of those. With it being March, I would assume there will be some fresh foods available. Any local fresh food markets, farmer markets, or just outdoor stands I could hit up? I don't want to kill our budget on fast food as we're hitting up an exotic critter convention on the way home, that's where I want to spend my vacation money Plus i'd love to be able to cook some meals for his family.

I'm planning on taking my P90 disks & bands with me.