Family, Fishing, Florida

February 21, 2012

Family, Fishing, Florida

After Missouri, an overnight stay in Chattanooga, and then on to Tampa. We started out with a visit with my cousin Tracy and his family in Temple Terrace, Florida. Tracy and I were fairly close growing up, although he was 4.5 years older than me. Our families got together on every holiday, and inevitably hours of playing hearts with my Dad, Tracy, me and his Dad, also Tracy - So it was the two Don's and the two Tracy's playing hearts for hours. Anyway, Tracy's whole gang came over the first night (see picture). Tracy took the next day off, and showed us some of the sights around Tampa, which was a lot of fun, and gave us a good feel for the area. That night Tracy and Joyce treated us to a great meal out at a local iconic restaurant, the Columbia, with Flamenco dancing included - a great evening.

I dropped Donna off at her cousin's (actually her Dad's cousin) place in Seminole, Florida and headed back to Tracy's to rendezvous with George Zimmerman before heading down to the Fort Myers area and Cayo Costa State park for a week of fishing. Donna spent the week with Sandi, part of the time in Ft. Myers at a beach front hotel. She and Sandi ate some great meals, took wonderful walks along the beautiful beach, and toured a number of historic homes (Edison and Ford winter estates) and museums, before Donna flew back home. No pictures from that time unfortunately, as Donna left her phone charging at Sandi's place while they were in Ft. Myers.

Meanwhile, George and I head to the Fort Myers area, where cheap motel, half price pizza night at a local pizza chain and inexpensive beer, and grocery shopping at Wal Mart are all on the agenda before heading to the Tropic Star ferry for our hour ride out to Cayo Costa State Park, located on a barrier island that has escaped the rampant development on most of Florida's barrier islands. We are the only ones on the ferry out to the island this afternoon, and we get the full show from the captain and first mate Billy - a two man comedy team.

George has chosen wisely as this ends up being a great week of relaxing, walking the beach and some fantastic fishing. So much fun in fact, that George is planning on making reservations for next year in a month or so, and I expect Brad Dobski and Mark White will end up joining us -also plan on going for a second week with Donna and bringing my sea kayak to do some sea kayaking around the island. So highlights for our time.

Great fishing, caught 12 different species of fish, had two fabulous fish meals, but could have had fish every day. Sea trout fishing was particularly great, as many mornings we caught fish on just about every cast for an hour or two. Other "eaters" were pompano (not very many, but boy do they fight, and they are delicious) and bluefish (George caught two, none for me - another great fighter). We also caught small hammerhead sharks, skates, rays, flounder (we didn't eat them because we weren't sure at first how big they need to be to keep, and after we found that out, we didn't catch any more), pufferfish, sculpins, whiting, ladyfish, small jack cravelle (these weren't all that big, but what a fight for a small fish - they can get big, but we only caught small ones). There may have have been one or two more species, but that's what I remember.

Great beaches and solitude - There are nine miles of beaches on the island, and we walked probably a third of those every day several times as we came and went from fishing. Before 10 am, and after 4 pm, the only folks on the island are the campers, and there weren't that many of us, so during those times we had the beaches to ourselves (see pictures). Between 10 and 4 there were some daytrippers, but hardly a crowd - a few folks strolling the beaches, a few sunbathers, and that was it.

Weather and Wildlife - The weather was great - highs mostly in the upper 70's low 80's - swimsuit and t-shirt weather most of the time - a bit cooler at the end of the week, but always very nice. A small amount of rain one day, otherwise clear to overcast skies. So very nice - Denver had a big snow during this time - so what was not to like. There are the usual pelicans - they are some of my favorite birds, - I love watching them skim along the ocean, and plunge into the sea grabbing a fish. Also there are a lot of ospreys here. We saw dolphins swimming along the coast most every day, and finally caught a brief glimpse of a sea manatee near where we were catching the sea trout. No alligators, although there are a few that can be found at a lagoon we walked by every day (no swimming signs - alligator present). Also a gopher tortoise.

So a great time - what's not to like about being retired!

I drove the "long" way home across the "deep south" on I-10, across Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, eventual getting to far SW Texas and southern New Mexico - where the plan was to hike Guadalupe National Park, and visit Carlsbad caverns. Bad weather negated the hiking in Guadalupe National Park, as cold wintry weather actually closed the roads around the park the day I was going to hike, but I did spend a morning in Carlsbad Caverns - really fantastic cave system - I have a few lousy pictures. In the depths of the cave, I ran into some volunteer cavers who were doing a survey of the cave floor, who were from NE Iowa, and who knew and had "caved" with my long-time friend Mark White who is a park manager in SE MN.

So a fabulous first trip to Florida - a great time to be there - made me actually feel young, as (no surprise) there are a lot of elderly folks, many for the upper midwest, hanging out in Florida at this time of the year.

Here are pictures from Florida.