After what felt like a 36 hour day, we swam in the Gulf of Mexico twice yesterday and visited a wild life refuge. Saturday for us began at midnight as we were still driving since Friday morning, having departed Davenport at 8 a.m. So, when the day turned Saturday, Charlie (our instructor and road warrior) completed the final eight hours of our drive, with the exception of two hours. Charlie's two hour rest was courtesy fellow classmate Linda. During the final hours of driving, we were in and out of the van for numerous wakeup and restroom breaks. We arrived at Sanibel Island around 8/9 this (yesterday) morning.
Having changed into our swimsuits at the final rest stop of our trip from Michigan to Florida, before arriving at Sanibel Island, we first hit the beach. The trip had us all feeling grimy, and the water (salt water) was very refreshing. I never experienced the buoyancy of salt water, this was my first. It is so easy to float in salt water. This was so refreshing, yet still educational, as we explored numerous objects as they floated by in the water. Having been a bit delirious (and embracing this as a team) we even explored dead fish (that I did not touch, lol) and sang Happy Birthday to the fishees, as we said farewell and let them float on their way to heaven. Ever since our group sang at Shoney's, and had the wonderful experience of their rendition of the song Happy Birthday, we seem to sing it everytime we feel the need to sing, celebrate, or express emotion, LOL! I added during one of our ceremonies of a fish, that we need to have a funeral, and Mitch Anderson said, "The Ocean Takes Care of Her Own", that is when I knew there would be no better title for the blog of this day, than Mitch's quote. Thank you Mitch!!
Next, we visited the JN Darling National Wildlife Refuge, located on Sanibel Island. Here we began truly photo-journaling numerous species, most which none of us had seen before, not in person anyway. A major component of this course is identifying 40 different plant and animal species, which we've learned will not be too hard to do.
Following our long walk at the refuge, which ended in seeing our first alligator in a mangrove, surrounded by red water (red from minerals, lol), we stopped at Bouman's beach, for the pleasure of swimming in the Gulf of Mexico again.
Our final destination on day two was dinner at Parrot Key, before checking into Comfort Inn in Fort Myers, FL.
No comments:
Post a Comment