OUR SANIBEL VACATION -
APRIL 2006
On Thursday, April 20th, we woke up at the ungodly hour of
3:00
a.m. to be on time to catch our 6:00 a.m. flight to Fort Myers via New
York. When we got to the airport in Syracuse, it was 45
degrees. Our flight was uneventful, and we arrived at Fort
Myers
at 11:00 a.m. where it was 89. An hour later we were on
Sanibel
Island.
The first thing we did was have breakfast/lunch, which was
blueberry hot cakes with blueberry syrup. I say, if
you’re
going to go off your diet while on vacation, start in a big
way.
We then checked in at our cottage, hurriedly unpacked, got into our
tropical clothes, and while Donna napped, I rushed down to the beach
and dabbled my feet in the warm water. What a luxurious
feeling! That evening, we had dinner and walked along the
beach
looking for shells. Every day we looked for shells, walked
the
beach, and took in the sights and sounds of the ocean.
On our last trip to Sanibel in 2000, we brought back an
entire
beach bag full of shells. This time, we decided to be more
selective. How that turned out will be near the end of this
story. I took about half a dozen sunset beach photos each
day. On Friday, we had a late breakfast, came back, and
walked
the beach again until it got too hot. The temperatures ranged
from a low of 65 to a high of 93 every day. We had clear
skies
and no rain the entire time we were there. As we drove around
the
island, you could see that some trees had damage from Hurricane
Charley, but everything looked pretty much back to normal.
Friday night, we went to a beach party at our complex and
chatted
with some of the other guests. Again, I took more sunset
beach
pictures. For the rest of the time we were there, it was like
this: late breakfast, hanging out at our cottage, walking the beach,
looking for shells, early dinner, walking the beach. Not
being
great swimmers, we didn’t go too deep in the water, just
along
the beach. The wave action would have made it unpleasant
anyway.
Saturday, we drove through J. N. “Ding”
Darling
National Wildlife Refuge. Because we went in the
late
morning when most wildlife has hit the sack, we didn’t see
any
alligators. We also saw a variety of waterbirds and a skinny
Southern raccoon ran across the road in front of us. The
reason
they’re so skinny is that they are more active than their
Northern cousins. Just a little ways from the exit, a gopher
tortoise crossed our path and a number of us got out of our cars and
snapped a flurry of pictures.
When we went shelling, I took my net and mesh bag.
Got some
nice shells, and the number of them increased by Malthusian
proportions. On Monday, we took a little boat ride to Cayo
Costa
Island, which is one of the barrier islands to the north of
Sanibel. There you could really see what Hurricane Charley
did. A lot of the trees were stripped bare - it looked like a
war
zone. But the blue of the water was like the Caribbean and there was an
area with driftwood that looked like a Salvador Dali painting. The sand
was a brilliant white where it met the shoreline. We got a ton of
shells there and increased our stash. We would end up having a full
beach bag that was ripping at the seams and very bulky. So much for
being selective.
As we passed North Captiva Island, where Charley made
landfall,
you could see the sandbar that filled in after Charley cut the island
in two. On Cayo Costa, we were walking along the beach
finding
shells when to our surprise, three wild pigs came out to the beach, a
momma and two babies, one was black and one was brown and they were
very fuzzy. They were first brought here by the Spanish explorers and
have been wild for a long time. Because people feed them
(which
they shouldn’t do), the pigs are friendly.
On Monday night as we were returning to our cottage from
watching
the sunset, we saw a really big bird come swooping toward us.
It
was an osprey, white, with a black facial and wingtip
markings.
We thought he has coming at us, but instead he passed right overhead
and grabbed a sandpiper. That was weird because
ospreys
usually eat fish. Obviously he was an opportunist.
On Tuesday, after we got our photos developed (which will be
the
subject of a later email), we left Sanibel in the late afternoon and
arrived at our home at 1:00 a.m. to find our cats and birds
overwhelmingly happy to see us. We highly recommend Sanibel
Island as a calm, peaceful, beautiful place to vacation. Our
hearts will always be filled with happy memories of Sanibel.