Vacationing along the Edges of Florida: Sanibel, Captiva, and Fort Myers Beach

As luck would have it, the final weekend of our trip around the edges of south Florida had us in Fort Myers Beach during their shrimp festival. And it was also the shell festival and shell show over on Sanibel Island. And an early spring break weekend.

So of course the popular areas were busy and traffic was a little heavier, but we managed around it. We had planned to spend the day just seeing what there was to see, beginning with a guided shuttle tour at the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge. We reserved our seats the night before, getting the last two available on the 10 AM tour. The information said come over early to see the visitor center and nature walk, so we did which helped us not be in too much traffic.

Only when we got there, the visitor center was closed because they are getting new air conditioning. They've been without it since Hurricane Ian. But the nature path was open, so we had a nice walk and got to see another alligator. And some ducks. And spoonbill birds. And a ginormous iguana at a distance.

The tour was informative but we didn't see a lot of wildlife, but we weren't really expecting to. There were a variety of birds and some fish, but still no manatee even though they said there had been some earlier.

After our tour at the Ding was done, we drove to the end of the island to check out Captiva. There is limited public parking and by the time we got there, there were no spaces, so we snapped a few pictures from the moving vehicle and headed back to Sanibel. The houses along the way were beautiful mansions. And the water looked nice and clear.

As we headed back into Sanibel, we stopped at the National Shell Museum. I hadn't realized that they had reopened after Hurricane Ian as the last time I had looked, they were still closed. They still have areas that are closed, but we enjoyed what they had opened back up. The museum includes a touch-tank area that was interesting and some beautiful exhibits. They said many of their shells are still in Gainesville. They had an interesting exhibit about shells and fashion.

We wanted to go see the lighthouse on Sanibel but the parking for it was part of their public beach parking and there were no spots, so we skipped it.

We couldn't decide what we wanted for lunch, and a google search wasn't helping me find anything gluten-free, so we stopped at the Publix on the way back to the hotel. (Have I said how much I hate my celiac lately?)

Our hotel was right next to the Lee Tran (bus) Beach Park & Go station. I had noticed the schedules printed in the lobby, so while DH was resting, I went to check it out. The front desk person walked me through how to use the bus to get to the beach for just 75-cents per person each way, direct, no changing buses. It was about 4 PM so we still had some daylight, so I decided I wanted to go check out the beach since our attempts at Sanibel and Captiva hadn't panned out. DH wasn't so keen on going but he didn't want me to go by myself and I wasn't asking him to drive/navigate traffic, so we got ready to go.

At this point we didn't know it was the shrimp festival at Fort Myers Beach. We found that out when the bus dropped us off and it was super busy. But we were able to walk out on the beach and take a few pictures not in a crowd. The bus was scheduled to return in 30 minutes, so we walked around a bit and then queued up. However because of all the traffic, the bus was running quite a bit late, so we almost ended up being at the beach for sunset. It was easy-breezy getting back to the hotel once the bus came, and if we ever stayed there again on a non-fesitval day, we'd use the bus service to get to the beach area rather than trying to drive. Their bus system also goes to some of the state parks in the area that we had originally been interested in checking out.