Marco Island trip - last days

Thursday / Friday / Saturday – May 28 / 29 / 30

Wrapping up the Marco Island visit:
One never realizes how short a week can be until one is tied to a scheduled / planned one-week reservation – such as we’ve had on Marco Island. And the irony is that we talked briefly about cutting things short and leaving on Friday a.m. But, realizing we would be returning to a house without air-conditioning and hot water, we decided we would tough it out! Actually not a difficult decision but one we did consider briefly.

Thursday – we putted around briefly – culminated with a fine dinner at one of our favorites: Carrabba’s Restaurant (in Naples).

The first photo is of a Pandora Tree. One of the other guest said it is called a monkey tree in Hawaii – because of the root system. Not sure if he was pulling our leg or not. But the fruit – shown here – is quite unusual. The inn-keeper said she was told it was edible, but bitter. We didn’t try it.

Friday we drove back down to Everglade City. Thought we might have missed something (we didn’t); but we did take an alternate route and toured the “back-roads” of town. The red flowering trees (photo above) are called Royal Poinciana’s. There are also purple flowering trees (shrubs?) called Jacaranda’s.

We detoured into an area labeled Harmon Lake. It appeared to be a limestone sinkhole (common in much of Florida). The thing that surprised us was the large number of turkey vultures in the area. These two must have been building a nest in the palm / palmetto. But there were many more in the area – probably 50 or more just sitting around on the rocks or soaring overhead. Must be good pickings?

Saturday we headed home – back to the warm house (no A/C) but home. We noticed that the perceived temperatures in Fernandina Beach are much cooler. The reported day-time temps per Weather channel.com were actually similar to Marco Island (85 – 88 degrees). But the cooler water of the Atlantic compared to the Gulf of Mexico means the sea breezes make it feel a lot cooler in FB, FL. That, and I think the humidity is lower here, makes it feel much cooler.

Nevertheless, we spent last night (and the next 3 – 7 nights) next door in our newest neighbor’s apartment. They returned to the mountains of North Carolina last Wednesday and graciously allowed us to use their apartment until we get our A/C installed.

Saturday we drove north. I haven’t seen so much dangerous driving in years. People changing lanes when it was completely unnecessary and completely unsafe. We survived – although we did pass a car upside down (only the wheels showing) about a 100 yards off I-75 in the swamp. One police car and one wrecker were on the scene so we guessed they had already carted off the auto’s occupants. Didn’t look good, but it must have happened an hour or more before we passed.

The last photo of the day is one of the figures seen on Marco Island – this one in front of a local Italian Restaurant.

I didn’t expect to restart the blog, but when you’re out and about, there are things to talk about. (Things other than personal illness and loss of friends – things that occur with advancing age!).

Wayne