Life in Ft. Myers

December 31st-January 12

 Happy New Year!



Almost too hot the entire week around New Year's Eve.
Believe it or not, we had to turn on the air conditioner -
and pay a hefty electric bill when it was time to check out.

We welcomed 2015 in with a pot luck with our marina neighbors on New Year's Eve and a New Year's Day glug party on Carl and Lois' boat, Puffin.  Glug is a delicious Swedish mulled liquor (find the recipe at simplegoodandtasty.com).  Then, the Saturday night before we left on January 4th, we invited the neighbors over for a cocktail party on Cool Change.  All a nice way to wrap up our month at Laishley Marina in Punta Gorda, Florida.  Wonderful marina staff, good local restaurants, clean restrooms and showers, inexpensive washers and dryers.  We'll be back.

 

New Year's Eve pot luck and music.  The musicians were pretty
 good but the audience had a hard time with the words.

Deb, Ann, and Al at our cocktail party

Peter, Karen and Harry
The table Wayne made did a fine job.



Part of the cocktail party hors d'oeuvres

 On to Fort Myers

Our original plan was to spend a month in Ft. Myers but Jann and Gary talked us into stopping at Punta Gorda.  We were able to snag a week in Ft. Myers' city marina at the end of our Punta Gorda month so we made a leisurely (can't do anything else in this vessel) day-and-a-half trip down Charlotte Harbor and then south on the Gulf ICW to the Caloosahatchee River.  An eastward turn soon brought us to the city of Ft. Myers and we tied up on an outside dock which gave us a great view of life on the river,

Wow!  1500 hours on the starboard diesel engine.  The port engine turned 1500 about n hour later.

 When we purchased the boat, the engine hour meters read just under 800 hours. We have put 700 hours on each engine since then.  We run about 80% of the time on just one engine.  So we have many more hours on the boat than we have on each engine.


Our overnight anchorage
The full moon rose in awesome splendor and we shot more than
ten photos, none of which captured its beauty.  You really
needed to be there for this one.



This is a bait shop, conveniently situated right on the waterway.

Tracking our passage along the waterway

Homes along the way



Ft. Myers City Marina



The view from our back deck

Cool Change happily settled in at the dock.  This was before the
96 foot boat took the spot on the other side of the dock and the
62 footer pulled up behind us as you can see below.  We looked like a
 rowboat next to those two.

 We've written about Ft. Myers before.  There is so much to see and do here and we still haven't done it all.  Thomas Edison wintered here and talked his good friend, Henry Ford, into buying the house next door to him.  You can tour both homes and Edison's lab, gardens and a museum on the property.





The Florida Repertory Theater is right across the
street from our marina.  On our first Ft. Myers visit
we saw a very bad play there but this one was excellent.
Good actors, funny, funny plot and a beautiful set.
This is a must-see if you enjoy live theater.
 

Our friends in Fort Myers, John and Kay picked us up one night and we ate at Cactus
Jack's.  It was a funky kind of place with a nice water location, good food
at a reasonable price and a band playing our kind of music.
 

 

You never know what you will see on the waterways of Florida.

 

Bike Night in Ft. Myers.  Every downtown street was lined with motorcycles, probably a few thousand of them.  Their owners, leather-clad, tattooed and accompanied by their biker mommas, were strolling the downtown area, enjoying beer, hot dogs, loud music, vendors, and other people's bikes.  Caution prevailed and we refrained from photographing the bikers themselves.

 

Thousands of bikes were parked on the streets of downtown Ft, Myers. Streets were shut
 down for the motorcycle event and the party began.

 

Colleen still does not understand what this vehicle does or why the heck it does it.  It is a swamp buggy that rolls across
 the surface of water on its fast spinning, narrow tires in racing events.

 

 Weavers Guild of Char-Lee (Charlotte County-Lee County)

The Weavers of Char-Lee held an outdoor demonstration at
the library on Saturday.  Wayne was fascinated by the looms whose threads
 can be raised or lowered in different sequences to  make intricate weavings.

 

 



Ft. Myers Farmer's Market
Notice the jackets.  This was one of our coldest days yet this winter.
The strawberries from Plant City and the Gulf shrimp were just-harvested fresh.

And the Sewing Continues

Sandy's queen sized bedspread finished and
ready to mail.  I think she will be happy.



A work-in-progress.  I'm befuddled about what to
do next.



The fractured sunflower you saw last blog is complete.

Over two hundred pieces were sewn together to make this.
Below you can see the back and some of the paper that
must be removed to finish the piece.

 

 

Wayne made a log carrier for son Michael for his new apartment's fireplace.

A new shelf was added in one of the small cabinets in the master bath.
 The plastic backing replaced icky furry stuff to make a sleek, useful storage area. 

 

 

Who wants to challenge Hal, our last blog's expert tree identifier?  This odd tree is covered
with mean-looking thorns all over its trunk and branches and also had seed pods hanging on long stems..  Figure out what it is and we'll publish your name and photo.

We found this tree during our walk to Publix grocery store.  Publix is 1.2 miles away.  A backpack is a must for grocery shopping.



Many of our sunsets are stunning.

 

 Tomorrow, January 12th, we start out for Lake Okeechobee via the Caloosahatchee River.  Our next stop will be the city of Moorehaven on the west side of the Lake O.  From there we will travel along the south side of the lake, the rim route, to the St. Lucie River and then on to Stuart, Florida on the Atlantic side of the state.  The trip is about 145 miles total.  Our transit time of the Okeechobee Waterway, which is maintained by the Army Corp of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District, will be three days.  From Stu we will travel north to Vero Beach where we plan to stay for a month.