This time, one of the couples from the boat club, and a long time friend of ours, asked us if we wanted to take a few day boat trip.  They were heading back up north and wanted just one more ride.  We were like….”Sure!” .  Even though it is technically “out of season”, Fort Myers Beach was having some kind of festival so all the marinas near by were packed.  We decided to go to Tween Waters again, which is located on Captiva Island.

As I’ve said before, each trip holds it own adventures.  If you remember from our last trip, BearTrax South had been pulled from it’s location.  Guess what?  It’s BACK!

BearTrax South

BearTrax South was up for sale so I am thinking someone bought it.  They have it turned around so the balcony is not facing the ICW.  Maybe someone is actually living in it now?????

The winds were supposed to be pretty brisk the first couple of days but it was supposed to lay down by the time we left on Saturday.  We were able to tuck in behind our friends as they plowed thru the waves on the way to the maria.  We only had one mishap.  We hit a fairly large wake from a passing boat and one of our fans went flying off the counter and crashed to the floor.  It wasn’t damaged too bad, nothing the Captain and a little super glue can’t take care of 

We did see this single sailor double masted sail boat.

Wooden Double Masted Sail Boat

Gary was drooling.  Me?  Not so much.

In no time at all we were at the marina and tied up to the dock.

Pretty Albin

At this marina, they give you some coupons you can use in their ship’s store, some of the restaurants and BOGO frozen drink by the pools.  They resort built an additional pool that is supposed to be a “quiet” pool, hoping the keep the noisy, splashing kids out.  And it was.  There weren’t many people there at all so we spent most of the day at the pool.  I even went!  I wore my long sleeve 50 SPF swim shirt that has almost a turtle neck collar.  I got some weird looks from people but I didn’t care.  No sunburn here 

We went back to our boat to get ready for dinner after a fun filled afternoon.  When Gary and I got back to the boat, there were a few “lovebugs”

Mating Love Bugs

flying around (this is how they fly, the guy drags the wife around, or maybe the wife drags the husband around, your choice 😉 ).  After a few minutes, there were several hundred of them flying around the boat and landing on the floor of the boat.  We ran into the cabin and closed the door.   We hung out in cabin till our friends were ready to leave for dinner.  We tip toed off the boat dodging the bugs.  We were hoping the bugs would be all gone by the time we got back from dinner.

We went to a nice restaurant on the grounds that night.  In the restaurant they have what are called “crab races”.  There is a big round table set up by the bar.  It is covered in felt so it almost looks like a pool table.  In the middle are 25 or 30 small hermit crabs all contained by a large see thru cover that is sitting on top of them.  The guy who puts on the show, and I mean show, has a string that he pulls to release the crabs.  The whole thing is quite noisy but entertaining.  They have two sets of races, one for the kids and one for the adults.  For the kids show, each kid gets a kazoo.  You all remember what a kazoo is don’t you?

Kazoo

The kids get to blow the kazoos and the guy tells jokes and squirts the parents if they are not paying attention when he is talking.  He runs three races and pays out a couple dollars to the winners plus a GOLDEN kazoo for the first place winner.  The adult races are very similar but with more raunchy jokes.  We left after the kids races were over and headed back to our boat for a few after dinner cocktails.  Luckily the lovebugs were gone.  Remember the shad flies, May flies or what ever else you want to call them on the river?  Those flying worms with wings and long antenna?   These bugs are the same thing but not as gross.  The swarm in, hang around for a little bit and then are gone.  Thank goodness for small favors.

The next day we got up early so we could find a good spot in the shade at the pool.  Yesterday’s spot was not exactly ideal.  Today we were the first people to show up at the pool, so we were able to grab the best place to sit (we had checked them out yesterday).  While I held down the chairs in the shade, the rest of them went for a swim in the ocean.   While I waited, I noticed they had some different looking lizards there.

Curly Tailed Lizard

See their curly tail?  Guess what they are called?  You guessed it…..Curly Tail Lizards!  See their long pointy toes?  And when they stop they do push ups!  I’m glad I don’t have to do push ups every time I stop.  You can’t really see in this little picture but this one is two different shades of green.  Cute little bugger, although you still don’t want to leave your bag on the ground for them to jump into.

After lounging around we decided to have lunch there and get one of those BYOB frozen drinks.  Gary ordered a burger and I ordered a $4.00 PB&J, with no crust mind you.  We also ordered two Pina Colada’s with a rum floater.  So the food comes, along with our drinks and the bill.  I was expecting a couple of nice fresh pieces of bread with my PB&J.  Here is what I got

Uncrustables

I had seen these in the store when the kids were little but never got them.  It was still slightly frozen in the middle.  I did get a bag of potato chips with it so……$4.00, I guess not too bad.  The drinks were $10 A PIECE and were served in solo cups.  They didn’t charge us the $2.50 for the rum floater (Wheeeee!  We got something free!), but they were really good!  Our friends just ordered the drinks and they were charged for the rum floater.  I guess the waitress just liked us better hahaha.

We got a nap in before dinner and then the maria/hotel had a van that they used to shuttle people into town.  We were going to go to a Mexican restaurant there.  Here is what the inside looked like

Dollars stapled everywhere

Isn’t it illegal to deface the American dollar?  Just look at all the criminal activity that went on in here.  I was wondering how many we could rip off the wall and use to pay for our dinner.  Whoops, I guess that would make me a criminal too.  I guess we’ll just have to pay the old fashioned way.  With a credit card.

Anywho, the dinner was very good.  See all these happy faces

Mexican restaurant, happy patrons

We decided to take a little walk when we were done eating.  The friends we were with knew the island better than we did.  The walked us down to a place called Mucky Duck

Road to Mucky Duck

I saw an interesting garden Gnome

Mr. Toad and his toad pad

This thing was pretty big to be a Gnome, I’d say maybe 3 feet.  Those poles behind it had interesting little metal weird birds on the ends.  The whole thing was really cool.

We made our way down to the Mucky Duck restaurant.  People come here to watch the sun set.  The restaurant is right on the beach

Beach by Muchy Duck

Gary and I took a selfie while the sun was setting

Lovely Couple

then it was

Going

Going

Gone

Such a lovely way to end the evening.

We left for home on Saturday.  The winds were just whipping again in the morning but we checked a few of our apps and found out the winds were going to die down at 11.   So we helped our friends shove off (they had a bigger boat than we did and could take the waves a little easier than us) and we hung around till closer to 11 and sure enough, the winds died down so we were able to wander back in pretty calm seas.

Another fun boating trip with our friends.  We’ll have to wait for a few more weeks for our next boating adventure.  All the way to Fort Myers!  Stay tuned