Sanibel

Ben and I dashed away for a quick trip last week. We spent Friday-Tuesday on Sanibel Island in Florida. I've wanted to go there ever since I was a little girl, and given the impending doom that BP has unleashed on the Gulf, Ben was kind enough to put our Glacier National Park trip on hold so that I could fulfill a childhood heart's desire.

We opted for bikes, and I think it's largely the way to go. The "Ding" Darling wildlife refuge, for example....I'm sure it would be fine in a car....really, fine. Okay. Probably not. It was great to be able to hear all the birds and other wildlife before we came up on them so that we could slow down, get out the camera, be quiet and see them before they ran away. We also saw mangrove crabs and some enormous fish that I'm sure we would have missed were it not for the need to take some water breaks.

The shelling was great (of course, a number of people told us that it's better in winter, and that this year is an off year....whatever. It's still better than anything I've seen in my whole life). I have a bathtub full of shells upstairs soaking and waiting to be packed away. I want to use them to decorate a house someday, if we ever manage to get into one! My prize find was a murex shell, all bleached white, about the size of my thumb and in really great shape. It made the early morning of the last day we were there worth it (sand flea bites and all!). I got up at 4:30 to be out on the beach at 5 for a 7:15 low tide. Yeah, I'm a little obsessed. I found such great shells, though!

We went to the Jacaranda to eat (good, but nothing great), and Ellington's for dessert and jazz (we were later getting there than we planned, and I WISH we could have heard more). The chocolate mousse was up there in the "best things I've ever eaten" category, and the group was really good. It was sort of funny, the bassist, drummer, and trumpet player were all sort of late-middle-aged or older, and the pianist/singer was my age. They were excellent, though.

Ben's request was that we go kayaking. I was trepidatious at best, and was pretty sure we'd drop the camera to the bottom of Tarpon Bay. But once we got going, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed myself. We saw a few birds, but mostly some pretty crazy jumping fish! My favorite thing of the day was the Anhinga we saw. They're birds that can dive down into the water, swim a while, come up to look around, dive down again, and repeat the process a number of times before they fly up out of the water again. I was flabbergasted by them.

It was a great trip, and great to have some time with just the two of us (thanks to Dad and Lisa and Chip and Cara for keeping the kids!). I hope I can get there again some day. It was wonderful to look for little treasures, and listen to the ocean, and not think about anything else.