Ft. Myers Municipal Yacht Basin

Caloosahatchee River District

Week 3

Happy Valentine!
Just the two of us!

 

A visit to Ft. Myers wouldn't be complete without lunch in Ford's Garage.

Ford's Garage.  The best hamburgers around!

The ladies' room in Ford Garage.

The hamburgers from Ford's Garage are directly related to Henry Ford's success.  In 1855, Mr. Ford visited a friend's meat packing company. In his autobiography "My Life and Work",   he states that visiting that meat processing company opened his eyes to the virtues of using a conveyor belt.  There he got his idea of an assembly line which attributed to his success in the automobile industry.

We eat a lot, but not ALL the time.  We finally saw manatees up close in Manatee Park.

A mother and her young one.

 A mother nurses her calf up to two years.

Do you see some surfacing to breathe? They spend approximately 50% of the day sleeping submerged, surfacing for air regularly at intervals of less than 20 minutes.

When they aren't sleeping, they are eating!  A 1,000-pound manatee eats up to 100 pounds of vegetation a day.  

Colorful Kayaks waiting for playful Manatees

Back in the city.

We were able to enjoy the Allure Your Senses Sculpture Exhibit only in Ft. Myers January-March. Allure Your Senses is a 23-piece exhibit of iron sculptures by renowned Colombian artist Edgardo Carmona.

Utopia.  Boy fishing

10.0 Balance, movement and internal and external strengths come together.

Juego de Domino.  Domino players, a part of tradition and life in the Caribbean and Antilles.

It's a Wrap

So we end this last week saying goodbye to the 3 who have help put Ft. Myers on the map: Ford, Firestone and Edison relaxing in Centennial Park. 

To be continued as we plan to move east and explore more of the Caloosahatchee in March . . . 

Ft. Myers Municipal Yacht Basin

Caloosahatchee River District

Week 2 

A visit from the Gorleys!

Enjoying the wind gust in front of the Edison & Ford Estates.

Sunset martinis on top of the Firestone, the tallest building on the River District. Only 4 stories!

Windy week with gusts up to 35!  We stayed in the marina most of the week walking the small city of Ft. Myers AND enjoying it's delicious restaurants.

However, on Wednesday we were able to cruise and anchor at Cayo Costa on Pelican Bay.

Stay in the channel.  Red to the left and green to the right.  No white knuckles for Mary Alice.

A natural!

Because of the wind on Tuesday and the fact that you can only get there by boat, nobody had ventured to the island. We were lucky and found traces of lots of sea creatures and many various kinds of shells, starfish, and sand dollars.

Mary Alice's treasure.

Cannot believe the wind brought this big baby ashore.  Must weigh more than a ton.

A calm night at anchor.  Good night Cayo Costa.

Ft. Myers Municipal Yacht Basin

Caloosahatchee River District

Week 1

A visit from Ingrid!

What a great opportunity to catch up with Lady Bowers.  With such a full week, we hardly had time to catch our breathe.

We cruised and anchored at Cayo Costa for the night. We dinghied to the island and walked a mile to the beach to do some shelling. Very relaxing.

Kayaked Bunche Beach Preserve in San Carlos Bay through the mangrove caves.  Hidden among it's many branches are small crabs from the size of a quarter up to a half dollar.  Reminded us of spiders. 

One of the many mangrove caves.

We also visited the Edison & Ford winter estates. They were neighbors and had winter homes in Ft. Myers and were friends along with Harvey Firestone. Thomas Edison loved southwest Florida and said it best (in 1914):  There are over 100 million people in the United States but only one Fort Myers, the flower city of tropical Florida.

Enjoying one of Mina Edison's gardens

On the weekend, Ft. Myers annual Arts Festival was held out our back door in the Caloosahatchee River District.

David Black's Fire Dance found in Centennial Park