ok, maybe i might be slightly dramatic here, but last night we had a wind chill advisory cause it got so bitterly cold and windy, and right now it’s 10 but feels like minus two and COME ON ALREADY with the damn cold weather!  so instead, i think about florida, where it got so warm that we had to quit hiking…

oh, and i give mom that big birthday greeting, but i don’t think she turns her computer on much anymore, so maybe i’ll have to show her this post when she’s here at my house this afternoon, after we go out for her birthday lunch.

here’s our second day in florida; we drove up to sanibel island.  we had to drive over a very, very long bridge, and it was such a gloriously bright and sunny day, and the drive was really good.

a

over there to the right is a long beach where people had pulled off and were fishing.

when i was nine, we took a trip down to florida, and we stopped at the sanibel lighthouse, so that’s the first place mom and i went.  there was lots of traffic, and there were a few parking lots around the lighthouse and we managed to get the very last spot in one of them.  it was crazy crowded.

ok, but i found some slides that mom had of our trip – here’s the lighthouse a long time ago…

it looks a lot less crowded back then, but then again, you can’t see the crowds in the photos of mom and me, either.  but i bet it was way less crowded then.’

here’s mom on the little dock near the lighthouse.

there’s one big main road going up the island, but mom wanted to take a back road, because we stayed at a hotel on sanibel way back then and she wanted to see if she’d recognize anything.

the hotel must have been torn down, of course…the windy little streets we took were really pretty, full of flowers and trees, and people riding their bikes.  no real traffic to speak of.  we passed huge amounts of hotels, and i’m sure the one we stayed in must be gone.

here’s a few photos from our trip in the 70s.  here’s me, age 9, ever the bathing beauty.

me, david and cute little amy on our screened porch at the mystery hoel.

palm trees never change…now i realize there’s a little face at the bottom of the photo; either it’s me, or else some random child that mom took a picture of.

after driving around sanibel for a while, we headed to the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge.  the day was heating up, and we started out on a hiking path.  here’s one of the little streams, and they claimed there might be alligators around.

we took this walkway to an observation tower.  we didn’t observe that much up there.

a little farther down the path we saw these fabulous pink birds – i believe they’re called roseate spoonbills.

we kept trudging along the path and didn’t see so much, really and it got hotter and hotter.  here’s the alligator sign, but no alligators were loitering there.

we finally decided to head back on the path because we clearly weren’t going to see any alligators, plus we were too hot, which seems like a crazy thought just now.

we got in the car and drove along the paved drive through the park.  we kept stopping to see the birds along the way.

meanwhile, kevin sent me this picture of home…

at one of our final stops, there were lots of teeny tiny little crabs on trees.  they were so small that it was hard to get a decent picture.

mom took this picture from the car, as this bird sauntered across the road.

there were at least a couple more roseate spoonbills on the water.

this bird was snacking on the vegetation.

after we left the refuge, we kept driving up sanibel, and crossed over to the next key, Captiva Island.  when we’d been on the dolphin cruise, the skipper said that all kinds of fabulously wealthy people had houses there, like bill gates and oprah.  right after we crossed over, we came upon a nice-looking restaurant and pulled in for lunch.

most of the people were eating inside – i guess it was too hot for them – but the patio area was incredibly delightful.  down below are the umbrellas over the tables where we sat.

i, of course, had to have some raw oysters.  they were delicious.

many boats were moored at the restaurant, which was so cool.  why can’t lake springfield have a restaurant right on the water like that?  maybe we should open one!

and kevin sent me this picture, les in the window and all that snow outside.

some of the moored boats looked mighty fancy.

i kept looking around for bill gates and oprah, but i didn’t see either of them.  maybe they were in disguise.  i did see this fine bird, who was waiting for a handout, i’m sure.

ditto.

the thing is, even though this was a very exclusive-seeming and fancy island, the restaurant was both delicious and pretty reasonably priced.  incredibly cheap, considering the fantastic view.  the place was called the Green Flash, and if you ever happen to be on Captiva Island, you should go there.

mom had a delightful time.

she took this picture on our way out of captiva.  fancy houses with lots of lush vegetation were on either side of the road.

we drove as far up captiva as we could, but we couldn’t go out on the beach there, because there was no parking!  not full parking lots, but no parking at all.  see, they don’t want the riff-raff on their beach, you have to be staying there on the island.  lots of people were wandering around the little streets up there.

so we drove back to the bottom of the island and stopped for a while on the beach that actually had a parking lot and some empty spaces.

we should have just stayed there to watch the sun set.  instead, we got back in the car and headed back down sanibel.  this time we took the main road and SUDDENLY WE WERE IN A HUGE TRAFFIC JAM.

everybody was leaving the island at once.  the traffic was at a dead stop, and every once in a while we’d inch forward and WE WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE IN A TRAFFIC JAM ON A LITTLE ISLAND!

I decided to get back on the little side road, but missed a couple of opportunities to do so because i kept thinking that the traffic was suddenly going to start moving.  we did make it back onto the little road for a while, but then, once again, traffic jam.

i really wanted to see the sun set on the beach, and by the time we got back to the long bridge the traffic finally picked up and i roared back towards fort myers beach.

since we’d been on the north section the night before, i decided to pull into a parking lot right next to the pier.  the place was packed, but i found a spot – then this guy came up and said that if we wanted to park there, this was the parking lot that belonged to a bar, and we had to buy drinks there.  “even water, if you want,” he said.

we should have just said OK then not done it, but i was so focused on seeing the sun set, and that was going to happen in just a few minutes, that we ran into the seedy bar and got two bottled waters – and it was SIX BUCKS.  c’mon.

but we did get to see the sun set, and it was fun, and i know i have plenty of photos, but since this is one of the longest posts i’ve posted in a while, i’m going to stop here.

this post is so long that it’s already the day after mom’s birthday, so now, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, MOM!

although who knows when she’ll actually read the site, she’s always very busy running around and doesn’t check her computer so much, and doesn’t read this site very much.  so we’ll just see if she mentions the fact that i wished her a happy birthday – and then, we’ll see if she reads all the way down here to the end, and see that i also wished her a happy belated birthday!

i know randy won’t read this far, because he just wants to see pictures of lester.

so anyway, today is the day it’s supposed to be a record low high temperature, but right now according to my computer it’s 17, and i think that was the record low, which was set in the 1800s.

and then, tomorrow and during the weekend, more snow.

officially, and seriously, UNCLE.

ok then,

mrs. end of february hughes.

whew.