Trip insurance claim for my cancelled December trip still pending. I sent over a fresh batch of documents to the claims adjustor this morning hopefully that will resolve most things. Having thought about it, I'm not sure I have actually suffered a loss yet on my Paris Museum Pass since it remains valid for the rest of 2025. Even though there's no chance in hell I am headed to Paris during its validity. We'll see...
In the meantime, Arlington Public Schools were off for Lunar New Year on Thursday and off for a teacher work day on Friday, so we decided to take Wednesday off and have a 5-day weekend in Florida. We flew to Fort Myers, which seems fairly unappreciated as a tourism destination. When we told people we were going to Fort Myers, many asked "why?" or assumed we must have a relative there because they don't think of it as a place to otherwise go. We had a great time, though, in a whirlwind trip with the whole family. Highlights:
(1) Kayaking with the manatees at the aptly-named Manatee Park in Fort Myers. This is a park near a power plant, in the winter the manatees come there to enjoy the warm water. A $38 tandem kayak fit all three family members and it only took about 20 minutes of paddling to get to the place the manatees were hanging out. We kayaked among dozens of manatees who stuck their noses out of the water, turned on their backs to show us their flippers, or just floated around like potatoes. Amazing.
(2) Parsailing along Fort Myers Beach. None of us had ever done this before, it was great. I wasn't expecting it to be peaceful but it was: hundreds of miles above the sea and the boat, you no longer hear the waves or the motor, its just quiet up there as you glide along. A dolphin jumped out of the water directly below us at one point. Fort Myers Beach was also nice, the rumors that it has turned into a post-Apocalyptic hellscape after 2022's Hurricane Ian are exaggerated.
(3) Taking a "shelling cruise" to North Captiva Island - a boat takes you 45 minutes out to the relatively undisturbed southern part of this island where there are tons of shells. Good ones: conch shells, intact sand dollars, bivalve shells that are still attached to each other. The island is skinny enough that you can walk from the gulf side to the bay side and the bay side is totally different. We found shells that had hermit crabs inside of them and even one conch shell that still had a conch inside - legally we had to put those back. We collected 212 shells in total in a few hours.
(4) Everglades City - this fishing village is located about an hour south of Fort Myers and about 1.5 - 2 hours west of Miami. The main thing to do there is to take an airboat tour of the Everglades. All of the airboat companies seem to partner with a local a nature center where you can go after your airboat tour and see a guy wrestling a gator. When I was a kid, the gator wrestler was right in front of you but these days there is a big chainlink fence between the kids and the gator wrestling and the fence is reinforced with thin mesh to prevent little hands from going through. Everglades City had a distinct tourist trap vibe but for my daughter holding a baby gator was the highlight of the entire trip and we got some great pictures. I had a much better airboat trip to the Everglades from the Miami side last year but taking US-41 and Florida Route 29 to and from Everglades City was some of the best nature viewing I've ever seen: the swamp is on both sides of the road and there is an animal every 10 feet: a big gator, an egret, a great blue heron, something like that. Amazing.
