Sanibel Island

On our last full day in Florida mom and dad took us on a day trip to Sanibel Island. They made reservations for a fun boat trip around the island, but unfortunately it was too windy that morning for the boat to take the trip. The tour company offered us seats on their afternoon excursion, so we looked around the marina for a few minutes and set off to enjoy the island for several hours. It was very windy and on the chilly side since a cold front had recently blown through, hence the sweatshirt and jacket below.

Sanibel Island is known for the vast amount of shells that are found on the island's beaches. The island is third in the world, behind beaches near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Philippines, for the number of shells found on its beaches. So it is quite fitting that Sanibel Island has a shell museum. We toured the museum's exhibits after we left the marina, and I was surprised at how fascinating the exhibits were.

Amelia and John were engaged by the museum's scavenger hunt activity for children, where they had to look around the various display cases to find matches to different types of shells. It was fun for all of us. After the museum, it was only fitting for us to take a walk on the beach to look at the shells in their natural form.

Compare and contrast Sanibel with the beaches near Sarasota. Siesta Key near Sarasota has powder white, fine grain sand with very few shells, whereas Sanibel Island has thick, heavy sand, that is studded all over with shells. Amelia and John enjoyed picking up lots of shells, and later they competed against each other to see who could get a shell to skip across the ocean (they found this is much more challenging than skipping stones across a lake).

After a lovely lunch at the restaurant at the marina (fresh grouper sandwiches with key lime pie for dessert!), it was time for our boat trip.

Conditions were good enough by afternoon for the Sanibel Thriller to go on an excursion. Yippee!

The Sanibel Thriller is a speedboat that travels very fast within the bay areas around Sanibel Island. The boat staff provided us with raincoats since the spray from the ocean can get heavy due to the speed of the boat (and the windy conditions that day). It was amusing when Michael Jackson's song "Thriller" was played over the boat speakers just after we started our trip.

Despite the windy and relatively cool conditions, the weather was gorgeous. We all enjoyed our time on the water with the beautiful Florida sunshine. 

In addition to providing a guided tour around the island, a main highlight of the trip is seeing the dolphins up close. Area dolphins are attracted to the wake caused by the speedboat, and they come to play in the wake as the boat zooms within the bay area. On three different occasions, groups of dolphins joined the boat's wake and played and jumped as the boat sped along. This was completely amazing!

The dauphins were so close to the boat! To provide some context, I took these photos with my regular camera lens, not the zoom lens. Each time, the dolphins stayed playing in the wake for around 5-10 minutes, so we got to watch them jump over and over again.

 What a great day on the beautiful Florida coast. I would go back for the boat ride again in a heartbeat!