Quote:
Originally Posted by cb977
Wonderful!
Did you make your trip to Captiva?
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Yup! The rain followed us all the way to Sarasota. We spent one night there so we could visit a few attractions before heading to Sanibel/Captiva.
The first attraction was a local weekly Farmer's Market held every Saturday from 7:00 a.m. till noon. There were a few orchids and other plants, crafts, food vendors, and locally grown fruit and vegetables. It was small, but nice. We quickly made our way through the displays due to the impending rain.
We then visited Siesta Key which is famous for it's expansive, powdery, white sand beach. Siesta was beautiful but the rain limited our stay to about 15 minutes.
Our next destination was Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. I highly recommend this attraction. We were able to spend about an hour wandering through this beautiful, enchanting place before the rain forced us to leave.
Then we checked out Venice Beach which is famous for fossilized shark teeth and prehistoric bones. I came prepared to dig with a sand flea catcher and was anticipated some unique finds, but once again, (you guessed it), we got rained out within minutes of our arrival.
After Venice we began to make our way to Captiva. We made a brief Walmart stop to stock up on a few groceries before we approached Sanibel. We arrived at our Captiva destination around 5:00 p.m. It was pretty gloomy outside and we were surprised to find limited cell phone service on the island.
The next day the rainy conditions passed and we began fishing and searching for shells. The resort had furnished us with a local monthly tide chart that was blank during the days of our stay
so I did the best I could trying to determine the timing of low tides.
Fishing from shore was not so great...mostly catfish and a few whiting. Every so often we'd see pods of bottle nosed dolphin frolicking in the surf. We got a kick out of the Herons who were very bold. They would begin chasing the fishing line before you could land the fish.
We had to chase them away so we could remove the hook, and then we gave them the fish.
Shelling was great. My sand flea catcher came in handy for sifting and for snatching out of reach shells from the surf. We briefly visited Sanibel's Bowman's Beach too. Bowman's charges a 2.00 per hr. parking fee, but the beach is worth it. It is environmentally pristine with protected Mangrove encrusted estuaries, shaded picnic areas, bathrooms, showers, changing areas, and a picturesque boardwalk leading to the beach.
Did I mention the heat? The average temp. was around 93 degrees, with a heat index of 104. The sun was intense and even with sunscreen I was forced to cover up with a short sleeved shirt and 3/4 length shorts to prevent blistering.
There was a bird sanctuary located on Sanibel, but we did not attend. It was just too hot and the hubby gets cranky under these conditions. We did go to an air conditioned shell museum. The museum did not sell shells but was very educational and had beautiful displays of shells from all over the world.
Amazing!
This was a very relaxing mini vacation, chaulked full of sights and sounds to fill the senses.
I almost forgot to mention the sunsets. They were breath taking.
This One Weathered The Storm
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