Team Kiwi!

Babies are such a nice way to start people. ~Don Herrold

We interrupt this regularly scheduled program for a special announcement! Our daughter Jess and her husband Brad are pregnant!! 

Brad and Jess at Bunche Beach this July

At Barefoot Beach

Of course we have known for a little while, but they had their first appointment today and got pictures, so they decided to let us tell the world the wonderful news! Whew! I'm so glad!! 

Brad had come up with the Kiwi because they don't know if it is a boy or a girl, so they had shirts made for all of us! He presented his Grandmother with one for her 80th birthday celebration on the 4th of July, and they decided to have some made for the rest of us Grandparents.

Me with MY Team Kiwi shirt! Now I can wear it in public!! :)

You can guess that I am VERY excited about this, and look forward to the spoiling and the cuddling....but first the pregnancy and the nursery!.Wooohoooo

....We will now have a Shellbaby!! Shelllady will have Kiwi out there in diapers shelling on Sanibel and Ft. Myers as soon as possible. 

I can hardly wait.

Stay tuned!!

::Hugs::

Cheri  

Happy Birthday America!!

This nation will remain the land of the Free only so long as it is the home of the Brave. ~Elmer Davis

Let me begin where I left off! Yesterday we had to take Brad to the airport to catch a flight around 2:00, besides the fact that Jess was going to miss him, we were sending him off the VA, where hurricane Arthur was headed! We were afraid he would get stuck in Atlanta and not make it home! All went well, even with delays and he made it home safe and sound! No excitement for him!!

Jess didn't want to leave until she found out if Brad made it home okay so I snuck out alone after dinner to the lighthouse for some mini shelling! 

The tide was very high, so I didn't expect much!

 The algae, or sea grass was all over the place!!

There were lots of shells, but just plain white small shells...nothing spectacular!

I did pick up a baby's ear and a shark's eye and one tiny wentletrap....(I will post pictures in my next post.)

There were boats and jet skis everywhere, you can certainly tell it is a holiday weekend! There were several dolphin just off of the fishing pier that were frolicking and playing in the rough water from all the activity, and I did get a pic...

I stayed at Lighthouse point until just about dark, and headed back.

We got up and headed out first thing this morning in order to get a front row seat for the Sanibel 4th of July parade...

 We were impressed! We are from a small town and kind of expected a small town short parade, but it lasted nearly an hour and was a lot of fun! They not only threw out the traditional candy, among other things were cold ice bottles, cold sunblock, car flags, and even bananas....tell me that doesn't sound like a tropical island! We had a great time! We decided to head home for some lunch and made a plan to go shell at Bunche Beach after dinner and stay to see if we could see the fireworks at both Sanibel and Fort Myers Beach..

We saw or buddies, king's crowns by the bunches.... :)

I circled the ones I could remember....and probably missed some! We are pleased that there are so many of these beauties!

We also ran across this bright pink sand in several places along the sand bars...does anyone have any idea why that is?

We saw some more awesome live shells...a LIVE shark's eye...

...and a tiny Nassa...

Although the shelling wasn't great, we saw some awesome colors and another beautiful sunset!

We plopped down on the sandbar and waited for it to get dark to see if we could catch both Sanibel and Ft. Myers Beach fireworks....Jess made her first "sandcastle" in years! :)

Our idea was great we got to see fireworks at both places, and a few others!! It was great!! Sanibel had great fireworks, ...

and as soon as their grand finale was over Fort Myers Beach began their display....every where we looked was fireworks! It was a blast....pardon the pun!

 Check out the Smiley face at Fort Myer's beach!!

 I hope you all had a great Independence Day! Tomorrow will be our last day :( Not sure what adventure we will have yet, (other than packing) but you will be the first to know!! Stay tuned one more day!

::Hugs::

Cheri

Road Trip!!

Our memories of the ocean will linger on, long after our footprints in the sand are gone. ~Unknown

Here are the pics of yesterday's finds, like I said before, there is not much here, except for Brad's Scotch Bonnet and Alphabet Cone.

Here is Brad's 'Loot'...

Jess and my pickin's were pretty slim!

Jess

My finds

Jess' ALMOST Scotch Bonnet

My Almost Scotch Bonnet

My Lion's Paw piece

This will be a long post, but I want to make sure I show pics and give details so you can try to go here, I believe it is a good trip!!

We decided to head down south today, go to Barefoot Beach (circled in red) and work our way back up towards Ft. Myers and see what we would find. Here is a map so you can see where we are talking about....notice I put an X where Bunche Beach is. (From my previous posts) You need to click on it to get a larger pic.

Our journey started on the turquoise bridge leading into Ft. Myers Beach, if you are at the lighthouse beach and look towards Ft. Myers beach, you can see the bridge on a clear day...

 The trip down is really interesting, and there is lots to see! The most surprising part for us is that the road to Barefoot Beach starts in a gated neighborhood of huge mansions! You drive on a brick road along manicured yards, palm trees and these amazing houses!

 You continue through the area until finally you see the brick road come to an end and you get to a state park setting, just around this turn, you arrive at a small building where you have to pay $8 to enter.

There are signs everywhere about Gopher tortoises! It apparently has a high population of them, Low and behold there was one right there beside the road to greet us!

At RC's suggestion, we went as far as we could to the last parking lot, and walked out to the beach and down to Wiggins pass. It reminds me very much of Cayo Costa with trees along the edge of the pass.

We found a shell tree, I had heard that it is tradition in Florida to find a shell, make a wish and hang it on the shell tree for good luck. We all did exactly that!

The shelling here was very thin as it has been on Sanibel this week, but I spotted this piece of coral, it was embedded in the sand so Brad worked to dig it out for me!

How awesome is this?? Bless his heart, he lugged it all the way back to the car for me! I can't wait to clean it up and put it on our porch! I put Hubby's flip flop there for you to see the size...

Here is the Gulf side of the pass

...this is just inside the pass...so different and very peaceful!

We combed the beach, floated around a bit, and did a little exploring.

 This Snowy Egret, kept his eye on us the whole time....

We decided to try following the nature trail back to the car, it was shaded and seemed like more of a direct shot and hopefully would be cooler...it was over a mile back this way, so we felt like the beach was further!

Back at the parking lot.

When we started out, we planned on going to Barefoot, then stopping on the way back at Lover's Key, then somewhere on Ft. Myers Beach/Estero, and ending at Bowditch point, (just across from Bunche).  It was a beautiful day, but very hot, and it was a long, long walk from the parking area to Wiggins Pass which was recommended by my blogging buddy RC. So we just went to Barefoot ate some lunch and came back home. We were very hot and tired, and a little bit discouraged because of the poor shelling! That's okay, there is always tomorrow...right??

Stay tuned...

::Hugs::

Cheri