We had a change of plans yesterday and decided to go to Pine Island and Cape Coral instead of Ft. Myers Beach and we enjoyed the change. Cape Coral is a city in southwest Florida located in Lee County and on the Gulf Of Mexico. Founded in 1957 as a master planned pre-plotted community. It is the largest city between Tampa and Miami with a population, for the city of 154,305 but as a municipality of over 600,000. The median income is $43,400 with a median age of 42. It is known as the "Waterfront Wonderland" with over 400 miles of navigable waterways. Cape Coral has more miles of waterways than any other city in the world. After driving all through Cape Coral I can attest to this. Everywhere you turned there was another canal. Then seeing a map of navigable waters it all made sense. The waterways look like streets of a very busy city. Almost every house is on the water!
Pine Island is just that an island connected to Cape Coral by a causeway. Once you are on it you know you have left Cape Coral to a new environment. It has a small town atmosphere with no stop lights. The main streets are paved but the rest of the roads, leading into neighborhoods are all dirt. Pine Island is a community of Artists, Authors and Musicians and that can be seen as soon as you enter the island. The first little commercial area is very colorful with brightly painted buildings. Select Telephone poles throughout the Island have been painted by local artitsts depicting the natural surroundings on the Island. It is 17 miles long and as you drive the main street you will come across a painted Telephone pole. There are several and the slideshow that I have posted is just a sampling of what we saw. It is a quiet place where tourism has not overwhelmed it...yet...and we had a nice day just taking in the sights. When we were at the southern tip of the Island we stopped to have lunch at the local restaurant, The Waterfront Restaurant, where it is dog friendly and has live music from 12:00 to 4:00 daily. We sat on the deck and when the musician saw Shadow, he sang a song he wrote all about dogs. He loves dogs and has four of his own. Shadow sat near by as he was being sung to and it seemed like he was listening to him sing the song. It was a cute moment. The food was good and the atmosphere was great siting right on a canal that lead to the Gulf.
We enjoyed our day on Pine Island, which by the way, is a major nursery for all types of Palm Trees. Today we are headed to Sanibel and Captiva Islands. They both have white sandy beaches and a huge variety of shells can be found. Sanibel Island has 22 miles of bike trails so we are bringing our bikes with us to ride around. Sorry Shadow, you will have to stay at home today!
No comments:
Post a Comment