March 13 Tuesday Day 16

Today we started our day at the Corkscrew Swamp Wildlife Sanctuary maintained by the Audubon Society outside of Naples. It is an elevated two mile boardwalk winding through woodland, marsh and much wildlife. The first bird we say was a red shoulder hawk, got a picture of it diving toward me to swoop onto a branch above me. We saw blooming iris’s. Shirleen was excited to see an alligator in the wild. I told her if we get separated and one attacks her to holler and I will take a picture for remembrance – not to romantic. We say many ibis, cranes, barred owl, wren and Shirleen’s alligator. It was a mother whom had little ones last year but she still maintains them and is their custodian. We also saw crawl marks in the soft mud, suspect it was her coming to her young. Many people taking pictures, some with lens bigger than my cars trunk. They and Shirleen saw a painted bunting, I almost did. We saw cypress knees, reminded me of Mr. Fellegy’s woodworking in high school. Moss covered trees, 600 year old bark less cypress. We viewed a colored sketch of some birds in a pond that a lady was doing. Towards the end of the trip we started to speed up our departure as the coffee was catching up with us.

Off to Marco Island. This Island is much more populated than Sanibel Island. Many high rises along one side of the Island. Houses on canals with boats and gigantic yachts. We drove all over looking for a spot to eat, we finally found one and we used Shirleen’s old adage and it worked again. We ate at Snook Inn, Shirleen with her grouper sandwich and me with my fried clam strips.

Across alligator alley we go. We stopped at an overlook and saw many sunning alligators, all sizes of fish swimming among the alligators.

This evening we ate at the hotel, a first this trip. Surprising, it was tasty, our lightly breaded onion rings, Shirleen’s dolphin sandwich and my deep fired oysters.

Tomorrow we will go through the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables with an exhibition of Dale Chihuly. jerr