Fort Myers

With the padlock removed from the laptop, I resume my job as chief blogger.  Actually, I always encourage Jeff to contribute to the blog and now that I've got him started, well, watch out folks.  I realized though that I have been remiss in giving due credit to Jeff, as he is the guy with the camera strapped on his back and most of the amazing shots you see are his. Thanks Jeff.

Very high on our list of "must dos" are visits to state parks, which are just excellent, and Saturday's visit to Cayo Costa State Park was no exception.  We very carefully inched our way through the shallow channel leading to the main anchorage and, in the company of about thirteen other boats, dropped hook in six feet of water.  We packed some snacks and refreshments and off we went to explore.

It's about a mile walk across the island to an amazing gulf coast beach.  We enjoyed a heavenly, long walk, hand-in-hand, toes in the gentle waves with endorphins pumping full blast.  We sauntered back along the dirt road quietly, hoping to see some of the wild hogs, armadillos or coyotes that we had heard about, to no avail.  So we thought we'd go manatee hunting. We dingied into a nearby lagoon quietly and looked around for where a manatee might be lurking.  Off in the corner we saw it, the tell-tail sign we've heard about: rings in the water with bubbles coming up. We dingied over, camera in hand, ready to snap our pic.  We turned off the outboard as we didn't want to disturb the poor thing, just snap our picture and leave.  There we sat and quietly waited for it to surface.  And waited.  Me leaning over the edge of the dingy singing "Here little manatee."  More bubbles.  Fish jumping all around us.

After a fairly long while we decided we must be mistaken and left.  Half way across the lagoon Jeff turned around and there, right where we had just been sitting in wait, was the biggest, scariest looking ol' alligator that we've ever seen. Yikes!!  He was probably thinking, Mmmm, tourists for lunch!  And I had to talk Jeff out of going back to get a better picture!!  And I had to insist!

The next day it clouded over which made for a good travel day to Fort Myers.  We hung a left onto the Caloosahatchee River (say THAT five times fast) and traveled upstream through very busy Sunday afternoon traffic.  Holy wakes!  We were getting bounced around good.

We are now in our slip in downtown Fort Myers.  I can't say much about that because I haven't been off the boat yet.  So on that note, here we go off to explore.

This little map of part of the West coast of Florida shows our travels for the past few days.
 The dots were our stops and the boat is our current location.