Our Stay in Ft Myers and Venice

Huge Banyon trees

Edison Theatre
(now houses law offices)

Fords Garage - great place!

Beautiful sunset in Ft Myers Marina

This is a beauty salon on a boat in the marina

Another beautiful sunset in Ft Myers

Pink Heals firetrucks!

Cool cars on show

Mike was definitely enjoying the show

Huge Banyon tree at the Edison Museum

Thomas Edison welcoming us to his estate

Beautiful sunset in Pelican Bay

Full moon in Pelican Bay

Happy Hour on NautiNell
with Jeff and Linda

On the move again!

Several sailboats out today

Dinghy ride while in Pelican Bay
Looking for manatee

NautiNell with quite a moustache!

Full moon in Pelican Bay

Some of the  carvings at Fords Garage

Interesting bathrooms in Fords Garage!
Very cool!

What a sight!
Sunrise over Pelican Bay

Some of the boats on anchor with us

October 31  -  Friday   Happy Halloween!   I took a walk about downtown checking out the lay of the land.  There are several bar/restaurants and neat little shops close by.  I’m sure we’ll be checking them out.  Mike worked on the dinghy – after a couple of test runs he thinks it’s fixed.  Let’s hope so!  We’re in a no/minimum wake area so he can’t really open it up yet and be sure.  We’ll check it out once we’re in Pelican Bay in a few days.  Several of our boating friends told us not to miss Fords Garage so we decided to go there for dinner tonight.  It’s a very cool place!  Of course, it’s Halloween so it was pretty crazy downtown!  Fords was having a carved pumpkin judging - if you took part in the judging you got a free shot of some Halloween mixture – not sure what it was – but it was good!  Fords Garage is really decorated cool and is known for their burgers.  We weren’t disappointed!  Mike had an Ahi Tuna Burger.  It looked great!

November 1  -  Saturday   It was really windy today – 20-30 mph!  Glad we’re in a marina!  They were having the “Taste of Lee County” today at the park next to the marina so we walked over to check it out.  There was plenty of fun-food-music!  Nice place for lunch!  Later on the same area held the Pink Heals Tour.  After having a drink at the United Bistro – we were off to check out the Pink Fire trucks!  Pink Heals is a fundraising tour that started out being for breast cancer but since has branched out to several areas.  There were a few food trucks there and we decided to check out the Poutine Queen.  We had some of the best poutine with pea meal bacon ever!  Brought back some really good memories of our trip to Canada during the Great Loop! 

November 2  -  Sunday   It was 45 degrees this morning!  We need to get moving south soon!  The weatherman said that we’ve broken the record!  That’s a record I could do without.  We had to pull out our jeans and long sleeves – even got out our electric heater!  We spent the morning waiting for it to warm up.  Once it did we unloaded the scooters.  We found the American Legion – big surprise!  Then it was off to Publix and the Liquor Store. 

November 3  -  Monday   We hung out on the boat mostly today – it was so cold and windy!  This is sunny warm Florida?  It won’t last….  Right?  I fixed a big ol’ pot of chili – the only thing missing was a fireplace!  You would have thought we were back in Missouri!  Mike found the social meeting at the marina – AKA  “Old men drinking coffee in the morning” – He was gone forever so I would say he was enjoying himself.  There is a canal boat here, the SS Turtle and a Heritage East which was made in the same boatyard as our Jefferson.  He did manage to find the owners of each and find out all about them. 

November 4  -  Tuesday   While I got caught up on the laundry – Mike got a haircut at Rumors here at the marina.  Rumors is a hair/nail salon that is on a boat that was built for that very purpose.  It’s here at the marina and is very cool.  We had lunch at Gwendolyn’s Café.  This is a neat little café just a few blocks away. 

We also decided that it was time to update our Garmin GPS/Chart plotter.  It hadn’t been acting right the last few weeks and it’s a pretty important thing to have!  I downloaded the update – let’s hope it was done right.  We’ll see when we take off in a few days.  Rick and Terese, our boating friends from Marathon, will be coming this way tomorrow.  It will be good to see them and catch up on what has been happening with them this summer.  There are so many of our boating friends that we met the last two seasons in Marathon that are heading south.  We should be seeing several of them on the way!

November 5  -  Wednesday   Today we decided that we’d spend our last day in Ft Myers playing as tourists.  We went to the Edison/Ford Museums and Laboratory.  Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had winter homes here in Ft Myers.  It seems they were good friends along with Harvey Firestone. The museums were really pretty interesting.  There is a huge Banyon tree there that was planted by Edison in 1927.  It is thought to be one of the largest in the continental United States.  Edison used the milky sap (latex) to create rubber.  We spent a few hours there.  When we got back to the boat we found that Rick and Terese were here!  Since we planned to leave in the morning – we loaded up the scooters and then had a docktail with them.  It was really good to visit with them.  Mike and I walked over to Capone’s Coal Fired Pizza for dinner.  What a neat place!  It is really decorated in the theme of the gangster era.  The pizza was great!    We’re ready to head out in the morning.

Our next stop is about 40 miles north – Pelican Bay – where we’ll drop a hook for the night.  It’s not far from Cabbage Key and Caya Costa State Park.  We may just dinghy over to Cabbage Key and get a cheeseburger in paradise! Who knows!

November 6  -  Thursday   We left the marina at 9:00 a.m.  There was a lot of boat traffic on the waterway today – especially around Cape Coral.  There were also a lot of dolphins!  It was another great day for travel.  We’ve really been lucky!  We made it to Pelican Bay by 2:00 p.m. and dropped the hook.  We love Pelican Bay.  It’s such a nice anchorage.  There were about 20 boats anchored here before the day was over.  Still it was not crowded.  We took a dinghy ride looking for manatees.  They were all hiding from us though.  We did have a beautiful sunset AND a full moon!  Oh, and we decided we’d have our own Cheeseburgers in Paradise on the grill!  Great night!

November 7  -  Friday   We had to wait for the tide so we ended up leaving our anchorage about 10:00 a.m.  We only have another 40 miles or so before we get to Venice so that wasn’t a problem.  On our way out we saw a school of about 30 barracudas!  Actually hated to leave.  Would have enjoyed the day hanging out on the beach.  Oh well, we had another beautiful day to travel and we need to get going!  The Venice area still had some traffic but not as much as yesterday.  We made it to Casey Key Marina about 3:30 – a little later than we anticipated because of all the slow manatee zones.  We’re staying here for a week so we can visit with Jeff and Linda.  Then off south to Marathon!

We’ve having a great time hanging out in Venice (we’re actually in Osprey).  We’ve been to dinner several times and are spending as much time with Jeff and Linda as possible!  Linda and I have managed to do some shopping and the guys are doing whatever guys do – drinking beer and working on stuff.  :-)

We plan to head our Friday morning – November 14^th.  It will be hard to leave them but we’re ready to move south!  Several of our boating friends are already there and they’re having fun without us!  Hopefully Jeff and Linda will be coming down later on in a couple of months. 

Till next time!

Admiral “C”

 p.s.  I'm a bit behind on my posts since we've been traveling.  We are currently (November 17) in Marco Island waiting for the winds to lay a bit before we begin our two-day trek to Marathon. They're forecasting strong winds and big waves for the next few days.
I'll post more later!