Cayo Costa State Park is a lovely, uninhabited area with beach, walking paths, campsites- both small cabins and tent sites and plenty of shells, foliage and birds. Ferries arrive from Pine Island to the east and others, like us, arrive on their own boats. We walked the trails for two hours- me bundled up in a turtleneck and jacket. The best part was Osprey Trail, which led us past several nests and great views of the unique sounding birds.

Honey, I'm home!

Friday morning we departed Pelican Bay and with the dinghy in tow (ok, another first) headed 2 miles south to Useppa Island, opposite the long awaited Cabbage Key.  Useppa is private and unless you belong there, are invited or arrive via tour boat to visit the museum, you cannot land there. No problem; we had our sights set on Cabbage Key Inn and Marina; where Jimmy Buffett (currently recovering from his off stage tumble in AU) played, ate cheeseburgers years ago… and then that song appeared.  Floyd the Great White Heron was a delight to watch. Our waitress Carolyn hailed from CT so we enjoyed a nice chat with her.

Floyd, during one of his statue episodes

Would love to have hung out longer, but we needed to keep moving south and a mooring in Fort Myers Beach was our final destination today. We don’t care what day it is, but locals still do that “weekend” thing and we need to take that into consideration.  Raised the main and jib and enjoyed a lovely sail much of the way to FMB, eeking out 5kts in 8kts of wind- yes, really. Beautiful milky green waters (I told Russ his shirt was a perfect match), tiny 6 inch waves and only an occasional boat . Passed by North Captiva, Captiva and Sanibel Islands to our west side as we made our way down the Gulf ICW.