Florida Vacation

Monday April 10th, 2017

The long awaited kayak tour, finally happens. The weather was pretty nice. Not too hot or cold, and a moderate breeze.

Below is the course we took.
I think the straight line represent the first half of the trip. I think the Navionics app I was using could only save so much data and deleted the older data. It knows the starting point, but the data between there and the end of the long straight line was deleted, hence it's represented by the straight line.

The guide had plenty of good information, but we weren't always able to get close enough to hear. There were twelve kayaks in the group and the current (tide surge) was at times fairly strong, and we weren't always able to hear the presentation.

Mandy the guide. Notice the bird in the background.

The kayaking wasn't great, because we were frequently in a traffic jam. Two or three of the kayakers knew what they were doing. Two or three of them were out of control half the time. The rest got by, but took up plenty of the channel. Between the current, the tight spaces and the crowd, it was rather challenging paddling.

I was surprise that Tarpon Bay Guides told us (told everyone) that you don't have to wear your life jacket. They said you can't sit on them, but you can use them as a cushion for your back. I expect their insurance company would not be happy with that. I've never heard of anyone being saved by using a life jacket as a back rest.

Much of the water we were in wasn't more than knee deep. But there were places, for example in the bay, where you could get into trouble. In fact, you can drown in knee deep water.

We went to dinner at the Mucky Duck. The food was excellent, the prices were high, but hey it's Captiva Island. We had to wait 45 minutes, so obviously the prices aren't an deterrent. I was very lucky to find a parking spot right off. There's absolutely no public parking on Captiva, so if you don't find a place in the Mucky Duck parking lot, you don't park.

I ordered blueberry-sour cream pie for desert. I took a photo hoping to get Laura interested in adding this to her repretoire. She said she isn't interested.

The big attraction is the sunset. The sunset was at 7:51. There were people streaming down the street headed for the beach up to 7:45 or so. The sunset is a big attraction, and in this case it was pretty cloudy and the sunset wasn't that great. I left Connie at the resturaunt and drove around in the car (there is no place to park on Captiva). When the sun was finally down, I went back to pick her up.
She forgot to take her phone (or my camera) so she had nothing to snap a photo. I made a trip up by the Mucky Duck and got out of the car to snap a quick shot. Here it is.


The moon was spectacular on the drive back to the hotel, and I attempted to capture that, using one hand with my phone through the windshield.