Thursday, March 6th – Happy Birthday!

What a difference a day makes---today I entered another decade of my age—70 years!! That used to sound ancient to me, but in my mind I feel much younger. Ponce de Leon came to Florida looking for the fountain of youth and even though we have been searching for a lot of geocaches during our time here, we have not found that fountain either.

 

We saw the resident alligator swimming on the lake outside our condo again.

 

 

 

 

Barb wanted to go back to Sanibel Island one more time before she heads back home. It is one of our favorite places here in Southwest Florida and there are a couple of interesting geocaches we wanted to visit. The weather forecast indicated an 80% chance of rain by 2:00 p.m. so we decided to go there first thing after breakfast.

 

We have successfully corrupted Barb and she registered a geocaching account. She and Jim are a team just like us and they chose BJDuet for their caching name.

 

I always enjoy watching the local law enforcement officers direct traffic on the Sanibel. There are no traffic lights at all and I doubt that they would function as well as the humans who can assess the needs which change from minute to minute.

 

 

 

The first geocache we visited was an earthcache—meaning that there is no actual container hidden. We had to find information at the site and e-mail answers to questions listed on the cache page by the cache owner. It seems that we always learn something from earthcaches and this one taught us about Sanibel Island and the Everglades restoration.

 

Sanibel Island and the Everglades weren't always connected. As a part of the effort to drain Florida's great interior "swamp" and create dry land for homes and agriculture, the Caloosahatchee River was connected to Lake Okeechobee through canals and water-control structures as a way to funnel off water. Since then, water that would have flowed south to the Everglades is instead quickly diverted out the Caloosahatchee River to the Gulf of Mexico near the southeast end of Sanibel Island. This bay where freshwater meets saltwater is one of the richest fishing grounds in the world.

 

The second cache we found was a sweet tribute and a memorial to the cache owner’s late father. This was Barb and Jim’s first official geocache find.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barb has a special interest in seashells and used them for a science fair project when she was in school. So, we stopped in at She Sells Sea Shells and I was amazed at the variety of merchandise offered for sale. Besides the normal things I expected to see in such a place, there were shells that cost $250.00 apiece. While we were in the store, a thunder storm blew in and the owner advised us that there was a tornado watch issued. It was quite a site to see and hear the palm trees blowing in the strong wind.

Cordell recommended that we cancel our plans to check out the Shell Show and leave the island which we all agreed was a good idea. The traffic officer was not stationed at his post, but drivers were observing a 4 way stop. We have noted that most drivers on Sanibel Island are very courteous and people are eventually able to get where they want to go.

 

It continued to rain all over this part of the State for the remainder of the afternoon.

 

 

 

The best thing we could find to do was to take naps.

 

 

 

 

 

Jim and Barb took us out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. I chose Skip One restaurant. Even though our last experience there was bad, the shrimp they catch and serve is the best we have found. This time, we waited less than 5 minutes to be seated and dinner was served in a reasonable amount of time. I am sure we will eat there again a couple more times before we leave for home.