Sunday, March 2nd – Tuesday, March 4th - Glad it is not snow!

Sunday:

Jim and Barb left this morning for a short trip to Key West. After we got back from church, we just took it easy for the rest of the day and lazed around the condo.

 

Monday:

 

Every morning since we have been here, I wake up feeling very grateful that we have been able to spend this time here in Fort Myers. But, today I was especially thankful when I thought about our family and friends back north who were experiencing yet another snowfall.

 

 

Cordell got his hair cut as soon as the salon opened this morning. We have found a stylist who gives us a pretty good cut, but we still are spoiled by our long time friend, Karen, who has been keeping us looking our best for more years than we can remember. We tried to convince her to come to Fort Myers for a visit and bring her scissors with her.

 

We returned to Lakes Park today to look for two more geocaches that are placed there. They are part of a puzzle series that involves a story about lost ducks. We did not bring our bicycles today because we wanted to get our prescribed daily exercise. It was a 1.4 mile round trip walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite spending a lot of time sweating in the hot sun, we were not able to find this cache.

 

 

After a lunch from the snack bar in the park, we tackled the second cache which required us to do additional walking to two areas and find information that we used to get the final GPS coordinates. We knew this cache was placed on one of the several islands that are in the lakes. I wanted to go by canoe, but Cordell felt it would be better to rent one of the paddle boats. We had seen an alligator swimming in the lake while we were eating our lunch and Cordell reminded me how easily a canoe can turn over.

 

 

There were cormorants perched on the buoys that were strung across part of the lake and they reminded me of sentinels standing guard.

 

 

We paddled over to the correct island and then had to find a place where we could get out of the boat and hopefully keep our feet dry. It would have been helpful if we had brought a rope to secure our boat, but Cordell found a place where we could get it far enough out of the water. My concern was that once we were on land, the boat might float back out into the lake and leave us stranded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After about a 5 minute search, Cordell spied the cache. We signed the log and then got back into our boat. It was a bit difficult getting the boat away from the shore because tree limbs and Spanish moss were hanging down around it.

  

 

 

We paddled around a couple other islands enjoying the scenery, the sunshine and the 82° temperature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were pleasantly tired after being out most of the day and bedtime was early for us tonight.

 

Tuesday:

 

Today, went to our local friend, Brian’s house. He has created many unusual geocache containers and I expressed an interest in seeing his work shop.

 

 

But first, we stopped to look for two geocaches that were placed on the top of walls. Finding the caches was easy, but retrieving them involved some effort. Cordell quickly grabbed the first one.

 

 

Since the wall for the second one was shorter, I decided to give it a try. Later, we discovered that this container was originally placed as a decoy and another cacher had put a log sheet in it. We returned to the site and found the true cache on the ground and signed the correct log.

 

 

 

 

Brian is a very talented individual and can do just about everything. After we checked out his workshop, he gave us a tour through his house which he and his late wife completely remodeled. Linda operated a sewing shop and she was talented in crafts and art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian accompanied us to the geocache we didn’t find yesterday at Lakes Park and so we had another 1.7 mile walk. The GPS coordinates we had used proved to be accurate and Cordell had looked in the right area. We had just not looked good enough to see the very well camouflaged cache container. The terrain here in Southwest Florida is very different and we are still learning how to search it.

 

 

 

Today is Shrove Tuesday or “Fat Tuesday” as some people call it. Since we were too tired to go to the church dinner tonight, we made our own pancakes in observance of this Christian holiday.