Shells, waffles, swamps and alligators

Fort Myers

Fort Myers has a downtown that is being revitalized. We went to a downtown waterside park to walk around, but the area was all fenced off for improvements. Other parts of downtown have already been improved, so there are some nice restaurants and a whole lot of lawyers and bail bonds offices, since the courthouse is also downtown. Waffle House is a chain restaurant with locations throughout the south. We’ve never been to one, so we stopped in one here to see if we wanted to try their food. Ultimately we decided to go somewhere else, who knows maybe this one was a little more run down than most?

Sanibel Island

We spent an afternoon on Bowman’s Beach, which is on Sanibel Island. The island is a great place to look for shells, as the island’s shape and location relative to currents apparently tends to collect a lot of shells. The National Shell Museum is there. It’s a smallish museum, but we enjoyed it a lot. We became supporting members, not because we intend to visit often, but because we finally realized that the reciprocity agreements between museum allows members to visit other museums for free. NARM is the name of the reciprocity organization. We could have saved a lot of money from all the museums we have visited so far on this trip. Our lunch/dinner that day was fried chicken, collard greens/beans/rice stew and key lime pie. A balanced meal if you count key lime pie as a fruit.

Everglade City

We visited Captain Jacks Airboat Tours, which, in combination with Wootens, is likely the largest tourist attraction on the Gulf side of the Everglades. Still, it was fun to ride the airboats on the brackish waters through the mangroves and see the wildlife. The amount of noise pollution was staggering though. Airboats have unmuffled car engines to drive the fans. As passengers, we wore ear protection, but the local wildlife is subjected to the constant noise all day long. We also road on a swamp buggy to drive through some of the marshlands (I borrowed the photo below from Tripadvisor) and the sharp transitions to the freshwater forests, with totally different vegetation. We did see several alligators so check that one off for our visit through Florida.