Captiva Fall Break with Mike
For Mike’s Fall Break, we took him and Liane at our favorite vacation spot, Captiva. We scheduled our flights so that we met at the Ft Myers airport and drove to Captiva late Wednesday night (10/17/12).
We haven’t been on a Captiva vacation with him since 2010. We are back to the South Seas Resort. We are staying in a Lands End two bedroom condo, 1611, on the North tip of Captiva located right on Redfish Pass.
Room with a view. We saw dolphin, osprey, great blue heron, great egret, snowy egret, pelican, and ibis. We spent many hours on our balcony just watching nature. It is so good to be back. And, we were so lucky to return with really nice, not too warm, weather.
Out to eat. For this short weekend, we only had time to go to the familiar local restaurants for dinner: Mucky Duck, Lazy Flamingo, Mad Hatter, and Green Flash. Mucky Duck has a new menu; the exterior had been nicely maintained, but the charm and the beach view are still unchanged. Just me and Cathie went to dinner at the Green Flash; this was a belated 30th wedding anniversary dinner. For years, our family vacation used to be in mid-June to match up with our real wedding anniversary date and the Green Flash was our special place.
Kayaking. We kayaked every day but one. We rented from Barb and Greg at Captiva Kayak on McCarthy Marina and each day we went for a 2 hour paddle around the island called Buck Key. From experience last year, we know that Eagles live near Buck Key, so it was our mission to find the Eagles. We know they hide in the tall leafy trees (in contrast to the osprey who perch on dead mangrove tree branches.)
Eagles. Indeed we did see Eagles!! On the first day, they circled us and landed on a channel marker right next to us. I don’t they were even paying attention to us — we were really close. What a thrill!! They only stayed a couple of minutes then flew away. Eagles are really big! They make osprey look like little song birds tweet-tweet .
More Eagles. On the other two kayaking trips we saw Eagles again, but only hiding in the trees. We also saw a flock of about 40 white pelicans migrate into the area. They just started to fly in. Also, during a low tide we saw 6 Wood Storks grazing in a marsh area — we don’t usually get to see these bird. Nice!
We also spent alot of time at the beach and the pool. One afternoon, we saw an Eagle steal a fish from an Osprey; the Eagle flew away being chased by three (really mad!) Osprey. Mike and I went golfing a couple of times. We drove through Ding Darling twice, seeing the usual abundant number of birds with Roseate Spoonbills and Wood Storks being the stars of the show. We saw two beach weddings; beautiful!