All Around Sanibel & Captiva

First thing this morning we put out our flag.  :)  Hope your Labor Day weekend was good. 

It was mostly sunny here today, with some beautiful clouds decorating the sky. The temperature got up to 93, and there was no air moving at all.  but was down to 75 just before sunset.

Around noon we went to the Sanibel Cafe to eat and meet a new friend. When we left the cafe at Tahitian Gardens, we went home, switched vehicles and went back out for a ride to check out a couple different beach areas.


First we drove to the east tip of the island, at Lighthouse Beach. The parking area was almost completely full, we did find a spot to park and then walked out to the beach.

I guess they made this sign for the motor home you see above.

I hope he didn't forget.

The clouds looked beautiful from here. 

There were lots of people, umbrellas, and boats.  There was wind blowing here, which made it feel a little cooler.

 
 

 

 

The shelling prospects didn't look good.

 

Notice how the lighthouse doesn't just tower above the trees anymore.  We've been noticing how much things have grown here in the years since Hurricane Charley.

 

 

In the photo below, (when I got it on my computer), I saw a helicopter coming toward the island.  Strange I didn't notice it when we were there.

 

 

If you will enlarge the picture, you will see that I was badly mistaken. :)

 

When we left the lighthouse beach, we drove over to Middle Gulf Drive to do a favor for friends.  They will be moving here in October and needed to know if there was a good signal for their AT&T cell phones, at the house they are moving to.  We walked all around the house and inside the pool cage and got a better signal than we sometimes get at our house.

 

I think they may have some oranges this winter. :)

 

Mission accomplished and we could get on the road again.

 

 

We drove around Middle Gulf to West Gulf Drive and then made a stop at Pointe Santo de Sanibel.  For anyone interested; they are redoing the entire pool area and it will be closed through the whole month of September, which is one of the slowest months of the year.  They are also doing work on the elevators in one building at a time.

 

There were very few cars in the parking areas.  We walked out to the beach and there were hardly any people, except on west at the Tarpon Bay public beach area.  There were not a lot of people there for it being a holiday.  But, the parking is up the street a little way and that probably keeps some people from going there.

The tide had been up pretty high.

Not good shelling here today, either.

We left Pointe Santo and drove toward Captiva on Sanibel Captiva Road.  Before reaching Blind Pass, we turned off to go back to the Sanctuary and a scenic overlook of the bay, at Wulfert Point.  There is a small resident parking area there. 

We walked a little way on one of the paths to the overlook.

This area has been naturalized to provide food and shelter for wildlife.

This area Wulfert Point was Sanibel's first settlement.  If you are interested in reading a little quick history about these islands, check the link to the Burns Family Team's website, the younger couple are neighbors.

I chose to sit down on a bench, right behind the sign, because the tide had been up pretty high.  There was still some water under all of those dead leaves.

An adult Ibis.

A young Ibis, notice the darker feathers.

Driving back out of the Sanctuary we passed my favorite house.  You can't see all of it.  There's more on each side of what is in this photo.  I like everything about the outside, I would just love to see the inside.

Then we saw the club house and noticed a lot of new palm trees that had been planted.  (Sorry about the glare in the photos.)  I wonder how old the big Royal Palms are.  I've always wondered how long it takes for them to grow to that size.  I'll have to see if I can find out.

After leaving the Sanctuary, we drove on out to Captiva, which is obviously a great place for a Honey Moon.

We went as far as the entrance to South Seas Resort, then turned around and started back. I've heard they are offering some good deals this time of year.

We stopped at the Green Flash restaurant, where we took these photos, looking over Roosevelt Channel .  If you check out their link, you can see just how narrow Captiva Island is.

If you enlarge this photo, you will see Tween Waters Inn Island Resort, further back on the right, past these docks.  They are advertising stays from August 30 – October 7 with 50% off the regular rate.  Almost everyone has special prices now. 

Next stop was at Blind Pass, before we went across the bridge.

There was some activity, but not as much as I expected.

You may recognize this Great Blue Heron, as he's been in several recent photos I've taken here.  A friend just told us that he has a fish hook in his back.  :(  I guess you can't just go up to him and tell him you would like to take him to C.R.O.W. so they could fix him up.  Poor thing. :(  I guess he isn't too bad off, since it was evident he'd been in the water and was drying off. 

From there, we were on our way home. 

 (I know, it had been a long day.)

I enjoyed the ride back, just watching the clouds.  I felt like Miss Daisy! :)

Oops, one more stop, at the end of Bailey Rd, where there's a short beach area.  There was only one lady there fishing.

You can see there aren't many cars on the causeway.  Gotta love this time of year.  Some of our resturants etc. are using this time for vacations and closing for a week or so to do clean up and repairs.

That was a lot of cloud watching.

(But, I guess it wasn't enough!)

We had been home for a while, but I kept looking out, watching the clouds and wondering if there would be too many to see the sunset.  Darker clouds had started moving closer and it was getting windy.  I looked toward the west and I could still see blue sky, so off we went to the causeway. 

Looking toward the lighthouse from spoil island B.

Looking toward Ft Myers Beach

Looking west, I couldn't see much sun.

There was still a man out in the water with a cast net.  There didn't seem to be any lightning, but the wind was pretty strong and getting very cool, compared to earlier today.  The temperature was down to 75.

The lighter color was rain coming our way, from over Ft Myers Beach area.  We could see a couple  boats, hurrying to get to their destination.

We were on the south side of spoil island B and this is looking back toward Sanibel, just before we left.

As we were turning around, I looked over to the west.  The light shining up from behind the clouds looked like rainbows, but the colors were too light to show up on the photo.

Making our way back home again.

When we got back home, we could tell that people on Captiva probably did have a beautiful sunset.  But that's ok, I still enjoyed looking at the clouds.

No, we didn't go anywhere else.  We were done for the day! 
From all of those clouds, we got 1/10th of an inch of rain.