Fort Myers & Sanibel

We arrived at our marina in Fort Myers Thursday afternoon  and were blessed to have a full moon that night with crystal clear skies. Here is the view from the front of the boat in the marina.

We spent 3 nights in Fort Myers and had lunch and dinner each day with Carol’s aunt, Geri Stearley.

She’s a vibrant 85 year old with a heart of gold but a painful back. She had just fallen 3 days before we arrived and cracked 2 of her lower vertebrae. Ughhh! Though in quite a bit of pain and moving pretty slowly, Geri was a delight to visit with. Fortunately, she has a great group of friends who constantly check in on her and see to her every need. This is a great testimony to her life of service to others. She’s such an angel. We’re just happy we could spend a little time with her.

This is a view of the sunset looking out her lanai on Saturday night.

Saturday afternoon, we filled our water tanks and pumped out our poopie tank in preparation for moving on. Sunday morning, we took our rental car back and headed out.

In short order, we had a cadre of 3 large dolphins accompanying us. Over the course of the next hour, they stayed close, entertained Carol and seemed to enjoy just swimming along with us. Wow, what a blessing!!!!

Carol loves to encourage them and sometimes, they seem to acknowledge her cheering.

Here, 2 of them are swimming on their sides and watching Carol. They are such amazing creatures!

It was Sunday and there were quite a few other boaters out. Here, we were approaching a narrow bottleneck in the river where it was quite shallow on either side of us.

Unlike other dolphin encounters we’ve had, these guys stuck with us as we passed under a bridge and even through the narrow river bottleneck. I think they really liked Carol!

While Carol was dolphin whispering, Jim had to keep watch up above.

Our anchorage behind Sanibel was lovely. We were all alone, and far enough off of the intercoastal waterway to be shielded from most of the rocking boat waves.

After a bite of lunch, we headed out to explore the mangroves in the Ding Darling preserve. It was pretty cool when we started out but it didn’t take long to shed our jackets.

To get into the mangroves, we had to pass over a very shallow sand bar that required us to push our way in.

Once in, it deepened quite a bit. Notice Samba in the background!

We didn't know where we were going. We just poked around, exploring.

There were quite a few high & dry oysters which indicated that the water level is significantly higher at high tide.

In a shallow part of the mangroves, we noticed this dolphin struggling to get through. He finally made it into deeper water.

The sunset tonight was lovely. We hope this is a good omen.

Tonight, they predict thunderstorms and high winds starting about 3:00am.

Tomorrow the winds are due to kick up to over 30mph so we’re hightailing it to a marina for a bit of shelter. Wish us luck tonight!