Jan's Musings: Wednesday May 10 (Sunset Cruise)

Just for a change it was a very warm, sunny day today, lol!

I had a relaxing morning the went for a walk along the beach. It was fascinating to watch the Brown Pelicans diving for the small fish, with the tide change there was a lot of "bait" fish.

As I walked further, I saw an Egret that appeared to be following this guy who was fishing and had come out of the water to get some more bait. He threw the Egret a shrimp head and the bird tucked in, lol!!!

I returned to my room for lunch, while keeping an eye on nextbus.com to check for a trolley that would get me to the departure pace for the cruise. When it was about ten minutes away I went outside to wait. The driver dropped me outside the Publix and the pier was behind that.

I arrived in good time and found the Dolphin statue mentioned in the instructions so sat down near it to wait.

There were forty people on board plus the two cruise people, so off we went, our driver/ commentator was Steve. We spent all the time cruising around Estero Bay but only saw one dolphin, it joined us and briefly surfed our wave before it performed a couple of great jumps beside the boat, unfortunately it was too quick to manage a photo!

The water is very shallow when the tide is low, maybe two feet at deepest, when it is usually at least four. We passed Rookery Island where a large number of birds are nesting.

We also saw many wading birds walking in the shallow water and Steve had to slow down a couple of times to get us out of the real shallows!

There were Brown Pelicans diving along with many other birds including some rosy coloured birds, the colour is due to their diet. I have to say that the skyline is spoiled by a number of tall condo and/or apartment buildings.

There are many small islands, about 70, in the bay and most are covered with Red Mangroves. These are sometimes left high and dry, but the roots go into the sea water and filter the salt out.

We cruised past Lovers Key State park, saw an Osprey nest and as well as Dog Beach and then approached Pelican Landing Beach Park where we would stop to pick up shells.

The boat basically just drove up on the edge of the beach and, after three attempts, we landed, lol! I found piece of coral or sponge and another of our party found a Hermit Crab inside a shell.

Everyone was back on time so we started back to base and would be stopping at a good place to see the sunset. By this time the sun was certainly lower in the sky.

There were quite a few kids on the boat but just beside me a family with a 3 yr old and an 8 month old, the father was useless and thought it was funny that the kids were screaming! The grand parents did their best, but both of the kids wanted their mum. They did not seem to have any small bites of food or toys for the kids, it was late and they were obviously overtired!

We saw a large heron on way back, and an osprey was still on the nest, although I am not sure if it was the same one! We stopped at a good place to watch the sun go down and a boat passed us hauling a large load of very long pipes!

The sunset was a spectacular sight with so many different and beautiful colours streaking the sky. We watched until the sun disappeared below the horizon and then left for base.

As we were cruising along the glorious full moon rose behind us. it was a gorgeous orange colour reflecting the sun we had just seen go down.

I had not realised there were any clouds around until the moon appeared with the lower left quadrant not appearing immediately. Then we saw a small piece of cloud pass in front of the moon!

I watched the moon for a long time as we cruised back and the birds on Rookery Island were still very active.

We arrived back just after 8.30 pm and I had missed the last trolley to go back to the hotel. I had been chatting to a couple of people while we were waiting and they were staying in my direction but further on so i asked them if I could get a lift and they were very nice about it so I arrived back at the hotel safe and sound!