I rose early on my birthday January 26th so we could get on the road and head towards Florida. We ate our packed lunch in the car in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant in southern Indiana, then used its restroom facilities. The Hampton Inn in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was very nice, even had a manager's evening reception, but to celebrate my birthday we headed to a nearby Outback Steakhouse. After a steak, I shared with my husband a fudgy brownie topped with ice cream, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream. Now it seemed like a birthday.
Our next night in Valdosta, Georgia, was fine, however, we had a big surprise the next morning. As we drove to get on the freeway, the entrance ramp was blocked by a police car, and the freeway traffic below was at a standstill in the southbound lanes as far as we could see. Fortunately I had a paper map with an inset of Valdosta. We ended up heading east toward the airport which was on a road that circled around again to the freeway further south. It worked! It was eerie though because we drove for several miles with no other cars behind us; finally in Florida a few cars entered I-75.
As we got closer to Fort Meyers, it began raining, and we had rain all the way to Tween Waters resort in Captiva, Florida. When we checked in, the clerk told us the electricity had just come back on, and her computer and key card system were not yet available. A young man in a golf cart escorted our car to the proper building and unlocked the room with a master key.
 |
This resort has a long history. I can see why people might rent a cottage (for the week or month), but the motel facilities were not worth the price. Both Sanibel and Captiva cater to the wealthy, and that is reflected in rental rates and restaurant menu prices.
We drove to the village to get some supper. It was still raining and with no street lights it was hard to find a restaurant. We ate some clam chowder which was not very good, then crossed the street to a pricier place where we ate crème brulee and key lime pie. The desserts were scrumptious, and the restaurant staff treated us well even though we were not buying the $20 and up dinners. A musical group played under a canopy in the patio where no one sat since it was raining, but the dining room had doors and windows open to the patio so we could hear the music.
The free continental breakfast served in the Captiva House restaurant which was part of the resort included fresh fruit, juices, coffee, tea, cereal, and pastries. The pastries were baked at the resort and of excellent quality. The fresh squeezed orange juice was a treat.
After breakfast, we crossed the road to the resort’s beach.
I picked up a few shells including a Florida fighting conch. I tried to determine if what I saw was debris or part of a live animal. It looked kind of like a leaf, but I sure wasn’t game to touch it. I plopped it in my plastic bag, but when we got to our room I had some niggling doubts and put the shell on our screened-in balcony. After about 5 minutes, the mollusk emerged and rocked back and forth. The "leaf" was its foot. It is against the law to collect live specimens in Florida. We scooped up the conch in the plastic glass from the bathroom and returned it to the water, actually the lagoon which our room abutted.
Later, we headed to Bowman's Beach on the western part of Sanibel Island. The public beaches on Sanibel and Captiva Islands charge $4 an hour to park, but I was glad to beachcomb there. I found some empty conchs and collected other shells new to me. I saw the most beautiful shell I have ever seen lying in wet sand as low tide took place. It was a large spiral shell with squarish purple polka dots in bands on three-fourths and golden tan dots on the remaining turretted fourth. Though it had some resemblance to a junonia, the pictures I had seen had brown spots. Unfortunately for me, the shell was still occupied. We also picked up a large live horse conch as did many other people. The operculum (a hard "door" to protect the mollusk when out of water) was interesting. I finally decided after later internet searches that the beautiful shell probably was a junonia, the typical mahogany brown looking more purple in the specimen I saw.
This is not my photo and not the coloration I saw; the dots looked more purple. It laid with the aperture buried so had a skinnier look.
We ate lunch in Sanibel, then went to the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum.
They had a nice display of Florida specimens, but the spectacular shells came from the Indian Ocean and off of Australia and New Zealand. I don't see a trip to those places in my future. A movie about mollusks was interesting to view, seeing the siphons and other parts, means of propulsion, etc. Scallops have hundreds of eyes along the rim of the body. Some
Sailor’s valentines, the plaques seamen made from shells, whiling away time at sea, to give to their sweethearts at home were well represented.
I bought the illustrated book Florida’s Seashells : A Beachcomber’s Guide by Blair and Dawn Witherington at this museum.
I always find the flora in more tropical climates interesting, so different from the upper Midwest. I had to do some internet searching when back home to figure out what some of them are.
Coontie plant, sometimes called cardboard palm; a cycad.The seeds are toxic, but Seminole Indians used a leaching process to make the also-toxic roots into a flour.
On January 30th, we stopped at the Lighthouse Beach on the eastern end of Sanibel, near the causeway to the mainland. That beach had hundreds of fighting conchs which were obviously alive as they rocked about. I found a few shells, but I was not interested in the pen shells. This beach was quite smelly and unpleasant. We crossed the causeway headed east across Florida to our main stop, New Smyrna Beach.
No comments:
Post a Comment