April 20, 2019
Finally made it to Sanibel and Captiva!
First stop: Visitors Center (Highly recommend - very helpful and informative!)
We asked for a lunch recommendation at the Visitors Center and they suggested the Laughing Cow, due in part to the fact that this great community park is located right next door. So, when we were told we had a 25 minute wait before a table would be ready, it was no problem!
Enjoying our lunch at the Laughing Cow.
From there, we went to explore the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge, which covers 1/3 of the island.
Hoping to see some gators, but no such luck!
But we climbed to the top of the observatory and saw some cool birds.
From there, we went to Blind Pass Beach, which was recommended to us by a local as a great place to go shelling.
Ill be honest..... we didn't love it. There really weren't many shells on the beach, it was extremely small, and parking was terrible. We stayed for about 15 minutes and decided to move on.
We drove over the bridge and made our way to Captiva and went to check out Jensen's, another recommendation by a local. We were told this was a great place to see manatees.
We found the manatee area and waited for a while, but sadly no manatee sightings. Rats!
And then on to another local recommendation - the Bubble Room! This place is decorated like Christmas year-round and has bubble lights everywhere (thus the name).
This is definitely an "experience restaurant" with themed rooms, tables, etc. Very fun!
But what they are most famous for is their cake! They have about a dozen different types of cake, which sell for ~$8/slice. The slices are HUGE and the cakes are fun, gourmet conglomerations.
The ice cream cake - yum!
And the red velvet. Two slices fed our family of six!
And the outside of this place is as quirky as the inside. Super fun place to check out!
But since the main reason we came here was to check out the shelling, which we heard was awesome, and we had no luck at Blind Pass Beach, we decided to check out another beach, so we made our way back to Sanibel and decided to try another beach. This time we went to Bowman's beach.
My favorite picture of the day!
Look at all those shells! The beach was almost entirely made out of shells, or so it seemed. And there's my boy, combing the beach for the perfect shell. 💙
It's not comfortable to walk on, but sure is cool to see!
Writing our names with shells
The shell-filled shore-line
And, because it stormed the day before, we even had some decent waves!
Two thumbs up for Bowman's Beach!
Then we made one last park on our way "home" (to Marco Island where we were staying for the week). Another local recommendation was to stop by this random campground on the side of the road out of town and ask to see their birds, ducks and monkeys. So, we did. And sure enough, they were there! This is entirely free and a short, fun stop. Kids loved it! They have tons of exotic birds, ducks, swans, monkeys and lemurs.
Three lemurs
Verdict: No, I don't necessarily think you have to visit these islands before you die. But I still highly recommend visiting here. We sure had a lot of fun!
