Our time in Ft. Myers has come to an end. We arrived here on January 12 and have enjoyed a blissful month of amazing weather (high 20’s & sunny throughout). We’ve had many, lazy days, two rounds of golf, lots of cycling, visits with friends old & new and a few nice evenings out for dinner. We did get a wee bit of work done as well - we removed, sanded and re-varnished our side entry door. It looks as good as new! Alas, it is time to move along on our journey.
Surprisingly, we had a number of visitors from Canada here at the Marina at Edison Ford. Two former CAA colleagues of Alison, (Pat Rotz & Pat Neilsen) joined us for lunch aboard Catan, along with a travel industry friend (Susan Webb), and her husband (Grant). We enjoyed cocktails up in the fly bridge and lunch on the quarter deck. Following our fun catch up, Alison left with Pat & Pat to enjoy a long weekend at Pat Neilsen’s condo on the beach in Naples, just south of here. A great time was had by all!
The following week, an old high school friend (John Wyatt) and his wife (Lynn) were passing through the area and joined us for lunch aboard Catan. It’s funny how you can go years without seeing folks and yet feel like high school was just a few years ago and all of the stories and laughter takes you right back. We really enjoyed their visit and will do more to keep in touch.
Pat Neilsen joined us again the following week, and brought with her a friend (Art), who is an avid boater. It seems that Pat has been enthralled by our looping adventure and wanted to spend more time on Catan and to understand more about our journey. We enjoyed another great lunch and visit aboard. Later in the week, we had a rental car and drove down to Naples for dinner with Pat & Art and her condo. We had a good euchre game, followed by a great dinner, sunset walk on the beach and a fun time at the Beach Club with live dance music.
Our last visitor was also a former CAA colleague (Rick Mauro). We hadn’t seen Rick in a number of years, but easily fell into great conversation over a glass of wine up in the fly bridge. We walked a short way to a great local restaurant (King’s Kitchen), and enjoyed a leisurely lunch – with lots of discussion around the Trump administration!
We met lovely new friends from the Florida panhandle, (Tim & Marguarite Burr). They were docked right beside us this month and we got to know them well. We enjoyed many evenings playing Wizard & 5 Crowns (card games), and spent our last evening out for dinner with them in downtown Ft. Myers. We will keep in touch and hope to see them again along our journey. They will be staying in Ft. Myers for another couple of weeks.
And so we head further east along the Caloosahatchee River, across Lake Okeechobee and eventually out into the Atlantic near Stuart, Florida. We will take our time as we have almost 2 weeks to get to the Cape Canaveral area on the east coast. Truth be told, we’re both looking forward to getting out on Catan again and seeing what each day holds in store for us!
And we’re off!
