Beauty at your fingertips in Sanibel and Captiva
Written by: Cliff Terry
Publicized in:
Chicago Tribune
Publication Date: May 6, 2007
A while back, in a seashell-cleaning hut on Sanibel Island,
a man was heard telling a woman, 'It's all about the shells, isn't it? That's
why we come here.'
'Well, actually,' the woman replied, somewhat
sheepishly, 'we came here to get away from the kids.'
Whatever the
motive, Sanibel and its adjacent barrier island Captiva have long been
delightful destinations for tired-of-shoveling Northerners and others seeking
sun and surf. My wife, Pat, and I first visited Sanibel/Captiva when our two
boys were quite young, then returned with them in their teen years and came back
as empty-nesters this February.
Part of the appeal is that a decades-long
struggle to maintain these islands as the 'Old Florida' -- as opposed to
condo-intensive stretches of the state's shoreline -- have largely been
successful. There's one unobtrusive Holiday Inn, and that's it for big chains.
No Golden Arches or 'big box' stores, either. Even the islands' scattered
'starter mansions' are shielded by native foliage. Plus, the beaches and shells
are as lovely as ever.
'If you're looking for high-rises and fast-paced
Miami Beach vacations or Disney, this is not the place,' says Judith Ann
Zimomra, Sanibel's city manager. 'But if you want world-class beaches, with
great shelling, it is.'
Sanibel -- 145 miles south of Tampa and connected
by a 3-mile-long causeway to the mainland's Fort Myers -- is roughly 12 miles
long and 5 miles across. Captiva, connected by bridge across a thin slice of
water known as Blind Pass, is less than 5 miles long and half a mile wide. With
the islands situated in the Gulf of Mexico on a geographical 'slant,' they
become ideal catching grounds for all kinds of fantastic shells.
The
islands boast 15 miles of beaches, 11 of them on Sanibel. There is access to six
public beaches on Sanibel, which shares Turner Beach at Blind Pass with Captiva,
home to public-access Captiva Beach at its far end. (Under Florida law, there
are no private beaches, though not all beaches have public access. Everything
between the water and the high-tide mark is public, but beach-walkers aren't
supposed to venture onto private property that lies above the high-tide
mark.)
The showcase on Sanibel is Bowman's Beach, recently named by
TripAdvisor as one of the 10 best family beaches in the United States. Bowman is
beautifully kept up, has classy restrooms and even the spacious parking lot is
landscaped with native vegetation. Like the other beaches, there are no shacks
selling junk food or tacky souvenirs.
The Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum is
reportedly the only North American museum devoted exclusively to seashells. It
features an introductory video on mollusks, answering such questions as how they
reproduce (very slowly), along with displays of shells from around the world, a
children's learning lab and answers to other such questions as, 'Do giant clams
eat man?' (No, they're vegetarian.)
At Tarpon Bay Beach, midway on
Sanibel, a sign reads, 'Leave nothing on beach but footprints.' Not many have
ventured into the water (the air temperature is in the low 70s) and a man is
sitting in a beach chair, quietly practicing guitar.
West-facing Captiva
attracts late-afternoon visitors hoping to catch the moment when, as novelist
Richard Ford has written, 'the sun turns the sea to sequined fires.' A dutiful
attendant from the tony South Seas Plantation Resort and Yacht Harbor, still
recovering more than two years after Hurricane Charley's onslaught, provides
umbrellas and beach chairs for the resort's guests in a roped-off area. The
beach is composed of finely crushed shells, unlike the more sandy composition on
Sanibel. Brown pelicans are floating out on the water, while a heron is standing
in the shallows, seemingly oblivious to the nearby human
activity.
Undoubtedly, the crown jewel of the islands is Sanibel's J.N.
'Ding' Darling National Wildlife Refuge, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and named after a pioneer conservationist who was also, of all things, a
Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist. More than 800,000 people visit it
annually, many never getting out of their cars as they traverse the 5-mile
Wildlife Drive. More than 220 bird species have been spotted there, and we saw
pied-billed grebes, ibis, white and brown pelicans, anhingas, ospreys in their
nests, willets, a variety of herons, brilliant roseate spoonbills and the
dancing reddish egrets.
Another way to see the wildlife is to bike around
or take the refuge's excellent 90-minute guided tram tour, or you might want to
sign on with Canoe Adventures headed by Mark 'Bird' Westall, a former Sanibel
mayor.
Other activities include biking the 27 miles of paths on Sanibel
alone -- it's all flat! -- and visiting C.R.O.W. (Clinic for the Rehabilitation
of Wildlife) and the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation's Nature Center, or
taking a dolphin-spotting cruise on San Carlos Bay.
Zimomra says one of
the biggest challenges today is water quality, which is affected by water
pathways from areas north. ('If someone pours a can of oil into a sewer basin at
Disney World, it eventually will go down the Kissimmee River into Lake
Okeechobee, down the Caloosahatchee River and then on to
Sanibel.')
Another challenge is the burden on resources imposed by
off-island growth. 'We're protecting our areas, but if [nearby] Cape Coral goes
from a town of 10,000 to 100,000, and they have no beaches of their own, and
every time their cousin comes down from Pittsburgh and they want to take him to
the beach, that's 10 times as many people trying to get to our beaches every
day.'
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