Sanibel Captiva Island Message Board

[Carly]

We have had a wonderful week on our annual visit to the islands. We are a party of seven - my family of four and my sister and her two kids. We are staying at a home on Gore Lane - Casa Shandria. The house is very nice with plenty of space for everyone. The best part of this house is the pool. The kids prefer swimming in the pool over the Gulf, so many hours have been spent poolside. We have four comfortable lounge chairs and a large patio table with an umbrella by the poolside. We've had breakfast and lunch outside every day.

The house is a very short walk to the beach. I had never noticed the little path next to the cemetary before. We rented chairs and an umbrella from Jim's. The surf has been very gentle - really nice for swimming and just hanging out in the water. We've seen a lot of dolphin from shore, much more than we usually do. We haven't had much luck shelling. Olives and augers seem to be our most common find. We've had our best shelling in the early evening.

Dining - we've eaten at the Sanibel Grill, Doc Fords, RC Otters, and we ordered pizza from the new pizza place on Captiva. The pizza was good - the kids were excited that our pizza was delivered by golf cart. Since we are a group of seven and our littler kids are pretty tired by dinner time we've done more meals at home than we usually do.

We went on the dolphin cruise and saw a couple pods of dolphin that stuck with the boat for a long time. It became really hot on the overhead deck, so we went below for about 15 minutes to cool off. It was a nice afternoon. We thought if it rained one day that we'd go over to the cinema and see toy Story 3, but the weather has been really nice so we decided we'd save that for when we're back in Minnesota.

It's our last full day. We plan to just go back and forth between the pool and the beach. We have leftovers from the Sanibel Grill for lunch and we'll try to clean out our fridge at dinner time. Tomorrow our flight leaves at about 3:00. We'll probably do a little shopping on Sanibel & grab something to eat before we head to the airport. I guess I also need to pack and do laundry today, but that shouldn't take too long. We packed really light this year to avoid checking bags. I love having access to a washer & dryer.

All in all, we're having a wonderful time. I guess we missed rainy, cool weather in Minnesota this week, so the timing of our trip was really good. I don't feel bad about having to return home. A week is long enough and we have some other fun things planned for the summer. Time sure does go by fast when we're here!

[RC]

Carly sounds like as usual Captiva didn't disappoint. Your right about time going by so fast. Have a safe trip back home.