Florida, Days 9-12

 Saturday, February 12

As the end of my time in Florida drew nigh, activities and pictures decreased as we spent more time doing fun things like laundry and packing. Jane and I went out Saturday afternoon to look for gopher tortoises at Bowditch Point Park at the end of Fort Myers Beach.

On our way, we stopped at Trico Shrimp Co. and Seafood Market to get shrimp. Jane called ahead to order it shelled and deveined. We brought a cooler along, and Trico always packs the shrimp container in a bag with ice. It would be fine until we got back to the condo.

Trico Shrimp Co., Fort Myers Beach's hidden gem

When we got to Bowditch, the parking lot was full, but it was late enough in the afternoon that several cars were leaving, and we were able to get one of the vacated spots. We walked up to where Jane and Jan had seen a tortoise in a burrow earlier in the month. Jane and I split up. Soon we were each gesturing frantically to one another, trying to silently indicate that we had found the turtle. It’s over here! No, it’s over here!

It turned out there were two turtles, completely out of their burrows and foraging on the scant vegetation.

The tortoise I saw first

Jane’s turtle was eating less and hoofing it to the shrubs and trees at a surprisingly fast pace for a tortoise. In fact, when we turned our attention to the other tortoise, this one disappeared into the undergrowth.

The tortoise Jane saw first

My tortoise was stuffing its face in complete oblivion to our presence. Nom, nom, nom!

Our tortoise hunt took much less time than we expected, much like our search for burrowing owls. I had gotten lucky with the wildlife spotting this trip! We left the park with 45 minutes on our one-hour parking permit.

Our next stop was a Super Target to stock up on snacks for the Superbowl. As I suspected, the prices were much less than at the Publix on the island, but it was a larger store, and we had no idea where anything was. We went to where we thought something out to be, couldn’t find it, picked up a substitute, found what we were looking for two aisles over, went back to return the substitute, and so forth. It was pretty much one giant random walk through the store.

Then we sat in a traffic jam to get back to the island.

We got back in time for happy hour and the sunset.

Sunday, February 13

The big event for the day was the Superbowl. Jan’s friend Sheila came for the sunset and game. While it was still light enough to get a decent picture, one roseate spoonbill few into the lagoon. I grabbed the camera and went down to the beach. The observers on the 9^th floor thought I would move closer, but I had realized that the spoonbill was keeping itself at a constant distance from me. Every time I took a step, it moved away and equal length. So I got what pictures I could.

The Superbowl was a pretty good game, we thought. We had way too much food, but Jane and Jan still had some time to eat the leftovers.

On Monday, we took Jan to see the owls on Cape Coral and tried to go to Matlatcha for lunch, but hit a truly awful traffic jam, even by Florida standards. Cars were not moving at all. We did a U-turn and went back to Fort Myers and had a less than outstanding lunch at Salty Papa’s Shrimp (although the sign actually said “S rimp”).

On Tuesday, I flew home, and boy, were my arms tired!