Tuesday, March 29th

 

This is the first Easter, we have spent in Florida. I especially liked the way that Hope Lutheran Church displayed the lilies.

 

 

On Monday, we made another geocaching trip to Lehigh. When we stopped for gas, two police officers had handcuffed a couple of women and were searching their vehicle. I think they were in big trouble.

 

 

There have been a certain amount of flowers blooming since we arrived here. I sure will miss seeing these after I get back home.

 

 

Yesterday, I got out my luggage and starting packing some of my clothes. I should have waited one more day. Last night we received a surprise blessing when the owner of the condo we are renting offered to let us extend our stay at no extra cost. It took us about a New York minute to accept his offer. We are going to be here 2 more weeks and now will leave for home on April 15^th.

 

 

We made a final trip to Lehigh today to find some more geocaches. We began in Buckingham Trails Preserve.

 

 

I almost always see people in parks with their dogs, but this is the first time I have seen such a site that does not allow dogs.

 

 

In 1942, the Federal Government built Buckingham Army Air Field whose primary mission was training aerial gunners who would defend bombers. When active, it was the largest airfield in the State of Florida. Today, the Preserve consists of 7 miles of trails for hikers and horseback riders across the 572 acre site.

 

 

 

Our favorite geocache today was named B.Y.O.P. We were not surprised to find a box with an assortment of ball point pens inside. The log was inside one of those pens. I thought that I could quickly eliminate all the pens that worked properly, but that wasn’t the case. So, we had to open each pen and found until we found the paper log wrapped around the ink barrel.

 

 

 

Rain storms arrived in the afternoon and by the time we got back to the condo, there was wind, lightning and loud thunder. It sounded worse to us that the storms we had earlier in the year during the tornado watches. We are pretty sure there were two lightning strikes on the small island in our lake.

 

 

 

 

Even though we miss our family and friends at home, both of us are very happy that we will get to spend some extra time here and maybe the temps will be so warm when we finally get back that we won’t have to make much of an adjustment.

 

 

Saturday, March 26th

This was a very good day for me because I felt better than any time for the past three months. Too bad, we only have 7 more days to spend here in this warm climate.

 

We met up with our friend, Brian, and took off south to Naples to look for some geocaches.

 

 

It was a very warm day with temps in the high 80’s—almost too hot, but I don’t dare complain. It just affirms my opinion that I would not like to live here during the summer months.

 

Pest control appears to be a popular business here and we have seen many company vehicles everywhere we go. Today I saw this vehicle which also offers palm tree injections. I asked Brian about it and he informed me that the palm trees can become infected with Lethal Yellowing, a disease which causes infected plants to die in 3 to 6 months. The only effective cure is prevention.

 

 

Naples is a beautiful city and seems to have a lot of upscale housing. Brian told us that even the smallest, oldest houses are very expensive.

 

 

 

We began our adventures in Picayune Strand State Forest which is made up primarily of cypress swamps, wet pine flatwoods and wet prairies. There is a challenge geocache placed there that Cordell really wanted to find. We qualified for this challenge since we have found caches that were hidden by cachers whose official cache name begins with each of the 36 alphanumeric characters (A through Z and 0 through 9).

 

 

 

Since there has been an unusual amount of rainfall here lately, and since the elevation is very low, we had serious concerns that the trail to the cache might be under water. During the rainy season, some people have waded through waist deep water. Often, the water can be knee high. But, we were lucky today because even though the trail was a bit muddy and soggy in places, we were able to reach the cache and write our names on the log.

 

 

 

We visited some interesting geocaches in the urban area also. I saw this bench in one of the parks. It was placed in the memory of a loved one and roses were attached to it. I did stop and smell the roses while Cordell and Brian kept walking to the cache site.

 

 

March 25, 2016 – Good Friday

 

Wow! It’s a bit hard to believe that this time next week we will be driving north on our way back home. Even though, I have had health issues for most of the past three months, I am glad that we were able to escape the cold weather in Maryland.

 

As Robert Burns penned, “the best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.” And so, we did not spend this winter as I had envisioned. Also, the weather here in Fort Myers was cooler than we experienced in the past 4 years and the record rainfall in January seriously interfered with our activities. But, I believe it still was much better than enduring the cold weather than often makes my bones ache. We certainly did NOT miss the snowfall even though we enjoyed the many photos shared by our family and friends.

 

We went to the local hospital to get a copy of the medical records for the treatment I received in the emergency room. The main entrance is very pretty. On this day, there was a woman playing some very soothing music on a grand piano. There is a U.S. Post Office inside a very well stocked gift shop. In addition to a cafeteria which is very accessible, there is a Subway Deli. Many other shops were nearby and I almost felt like I was in a shopping mall rather than a hospital.

 

 

 

We saw this cute mouse car in the hospital parking lot.

 

 

We did enjoy spending several afternoons at the community swimming pool and the adjacent hot tub.

 

 

 

On St. Patrick’s Day, we hiked a bit in Estero Bay Preserve State Park. 
 

 

 

 

While we did not see any leprechauns, we did find a geocache with this huge spider on top.

 

 

 

 

We were a bit amused when we saw this woman in the drug store and noticed that her shopping cart had two canes and a bottle of wine!

 

 

 

Some of the signs on the roads are a bit different from what we see at home. Usually, an intersection has “No U Turns” signs posted, but this one informed us that we were allowed to make such a turn.

 

 

Some of the left turn lanes are marked with the usual white turn arrow but are painted on a black background which makes it more visible in my opinion. Many route numbers are also painted on the pavement in colors just like on the regular sign posts that we usually see. These are great ideas that I would like to see used everywhere.

 

 

We went geocaching in North Port which like a few other areas, had planned communities that went bust before they could be fully developed. We have visited at least three such communities and it is hard to believe that there are roads where few to no houses were built.

 

 

On Wednesday, morning we received notification that 6 new geocaches were published less than a mile from our condo. It is nice to be able to log a FTF (First To Find) for any new cache. So, we quickly gathered ourselves and our gear and jumped into our car and drove to the Winkler Road Trail Head at Estero Bay Preserve State Park. It is located at the end of the road on which our community is situated. There was a vehicle already parked there, so we were figured that some other geocacher had already found these caches. We immediately decided to go to the left of the circle, with hopes that this other person had gone right and we might be able to log a FTF on at least one of the caches.

 

 

We had hiked in this preserve last year and although it is flat terrain, there are no maintained trails other than areas where the grass has been mowed. We traversed some sections that were so muddy and marshy that we had to step on clumps of grass while trying to keep our boots relatively dry. Wild pigs roam here along with other creatures and in several places the ground was quite uneven from their rutting around.

 

 

 

As with all marshes, one has to deal with flying pests. Even though we sprayed ourselves with insect repellant and we encountered very few mosquitos, the black flies were relentless and the repellant did not deter them. We put bandanas on our heads under our hats to keep them from biting our necks.
 

 

 

I took a break during the hike and rested at one of the observation decks for a while.

 

 

We noticed some pretty red blooms on this plant.

 

 

After, about 2 ½ hours, we were satisfied to have been the first geocachers to find all 6 of the new caches.

 

 

 

The other vehicle we saw belonged to a person who was just hiking a bit. When we finished, there was a different vehicle parked there that we definitely knew belonged to a geocacher because they had a geocaching travel bug on their back window.
 

 

 

I still find puzzling to see people shopping with their non-service dogs in stores. This was not a pet store, but a Walmart.

 

 

Today, Friday, we spent some time walking around historic Fort Myers.

 

 

 

 

This is always a fun and interesting place visit. I like to stop at Centennial Park and visit the sculptures of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone who were good friends. They spent winters in Fort Myers and collaborated on some ventures.

 

 

Our objective was to see outside exhibits of iron sculptures by renowned Colombia artist, Edgardo Carmona. This artwork came from Paris to launch the sales of a future high-rise condominium on the Caloosahatchee River.

 

 

 

I have always known that I am artistically challenged and while I found many of the sculptures interesting, I never did understand the symbolism that was explained in an app that we were able to download to our iPhones.

 

 

There are a whole lot of boats also spending the winter here in southwest Florida. This one was advertised as a “floating condo”. I understood the palm tree on deck, but thought that the icicles were a bit out of place.
 

 

 

It is always interesting to see the different styles of the architecture in the old downtown and I can only imagine how it must have been to live and visit here long ago.

 

 

 

 

There is a nice memorial park where one monument honors Rodolpho P. Hernandez who received the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Was it a coincidence this was National Medal of Honor Day?

 

 

I met a man, Melvin, on the street this afternoon—Good Friday! He portrays Jesus and this has been his full time ministry for 4 years.
 

 

 

 

 

The smaller alligator visited us again this afternoon.