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.
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.
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.
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