There are three Doc Ford's restaurants in the vicinity of the Estero Bay Islands, I think. I went to one right on Sanibel. The grouper sammitch was splendid, but what I really came here for was the Sanibel Sunset Cocktail. You should also go, and you should also get one. Don't put it off. Later is now.
What's in it? I don't know, man, rum and stuff.
Oddly, there's no overarching name for the group of mostly-connected-by-bridges islands off the Gulf Coast in the Ft. Myers/Cape Coral area. You sometimes see the term "The Sanibel Islands" but this is usually in reference to just Sanibel and Captiva. For lack of anything better, we'll call them "The Estero Bay Islands" for now. (Similarly, "The Florida Keys" is a pretty terrible and misleading name for those most famous islands at the state's southern tip, and "The Bayway Islands" isn't a very creative name either.)
Your adventure starts in Bonita Springs, where Bonita Beach Road will take you offshore onto the marvelous Little Hickory Island (which isn't so little), a highly populated, swingin' place, very beachy-restauranty-touristy. Like most of these islands, it's crawling with people, so get out here early if you hope to get a parking place for a beach access spot.
Next up is Bay's Island and Big Hickory Island (plus a bunch more accessible by boat only, like Battista Island). Not a whole lot going on here, though there's a fabulous beach on Big Hickory's northern end. Then the road takes you over a couple of unnamed islands (name those islands, dammit!) which is weird because one of them has one of the region's most beloved dog beaches. I've seen no online source that names the island it's on - they just say "Estero", which is the city that owns these keys.
Long Key is next, and Black Island - which is where you can turn off and drive over to Lovers Key and Inner Key at the Lovers Key State Park. Black Island is a strangely shaped squiggle of land that has tendrils coming off it that almost make it three different islands - and when you're standing on one arm of it looking way over at another, it might as well be so. Other islands, like Charlie Key, Monkey Joe Key, Davis Key, Little Davis Key, and Mound Key loom in the distance, inaccessible by automobile.
Estero Island may not come first to mind - if at all - when you think of party-tourist hotspots in Florida, but let me tell you, this place is hoppin'. After the mangrove nature trails of the last few islands, you may be shocked to find this one completely built up with resorts, beach cottages, and row upon rows of stores and bars. The beaches here are fantastic, and I suspect a lot of people, fed up with trying to find a place to park down the road at Sanibel, just say to heck with it and make camp here. There was a biker event going on when I was recently here, and the place had that quintessential good-times-in-Florida feel.
Meanwhile, inside the bay, plenty more islands lie in wait for your exploration via boat. Most are unnamed, but at least three are: Dog Key, Julie's Island, and Starvation Key.
Beyond Estero Island we find San Carlos Island and a community that is partially built on mainland swamp and partially on artificial islands; the maps list it as Siesta V, and about it I can find very little. You cross over these on your way back to the mainland for just a bit before heading back over the puddle to enter Summerlin Road, which quickly changes its name to McGregor Blvd, and then becomes the Sanibel Causeway.
Once on the causeway, first up is Connie Mack Island, a lovely little boating community mostly surrounded by swampland. Then there's Punta Rassa, an almost-island which for some reason has a much more colorful history than some of its neighbors. It was once a thriving shipping port for cattle, was a key site during both Seminole Indian Wars and the Civil War, and its telegraph office was where America first learned of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Cuba in 1898.
Then we have Island A and Island B, two beautiful must-pull-over spots on the causeway. What they lack in imaginative names, they more than make up for in tranquility. Personally, I'd be happy to stop here and kick back on Islands A and B and call it a night. Estero has all the action one needs and A & B have all the tropical peacefulness. But for many tourists, the real goal is still to come: Sanibel Island.
Sanibel's a weird and rather creepy place. You can never really get a grip on it because it's a mishmash of highly touristy places intermingled with deep jungle-like nature preserves. There are long stretches of civilization followed by even longer spooky swampy stretches of "Where the hell am I?"
The reason Sanibel is so popular is because it's regarded as the ultimate place to collect exotic shells on the beach in Florida, and perhaps the entire nation. This is in part because Sanibel is a geographical oddity: a barrier island that sticks out east-west rather than hugging the coast north-south. For this reason, they say, flotsam and jetsam from the sea are more likely to wash up here than elsewhere.
But there's even one more island drivable past Sanibel: Captiva Island. Artist Robert Rauschenberg made Captiva his home and workplace, and his studio still stands today, just as he left it when he died. His estate remains the largest landowner in the area. The photo below was taken at the Green Flash Dock in Captiva, overlooking Buck Key in the distance.
North Captiva Island is not connected to Captiva Island by road, but is home to many rich folks who go get their groceries by plane or boat.
If you're lucky enough to have said boat, there's still loads more islands past North Captiva that properly belong classified with this grouping before you reach the huge mouth of Charlotte Harbor. To name just a few: Lacosta Island, Punta Blanca, Black Key, Wood Key, Josslyn Island, Cabbage Key, Useppa Island, The Panther Keys, Bokeelia Island, Patricio Island, Burgess Island, etc.
And don't forget Pine Island, a massive one that runs parallel to much of Sanibel and Captiva, and is accessible by car from the mainland but it's a very long drive to get back up and around to its entrance. So much so, that it's probably something you'd do on a different day's excursion. But if you go, bring your metal detector.
Me, I just wanna go back to Island A.
I just recently became aware of a YouTube video of an alleged sea serpent in the waters off Sanibel Island. The people who saw the creature described it as having a head which "resembled a sea otter" and a body which "looked like a giant 20 foot plus snake".
Nothing shown in the video remotely looks like what they have described, and to everyone's great misfortune it appears the couple who video-recorded the thing stopped recording after only 54 seconds. In truth, the dark rotund thing whose back appears briefly breaking the water looks to me like a manatee or young whale. Cool, but relatively ordinary. (And for Heaven's sake, people, stop calling it "the Loch Ness Monster". The Loch Ness Monster is in Loch Ness.)
But as Jay Cooney points out, Scott Marlowe's The Cryptid Creatures of Florida tells anecdotes about similar sounding sea serpents with mammalian heads:
"Two navy men stationed at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station reportedly observed a long-necked animal with 'antennae' atop a head similar to that of a dog. Two fishermen reported a similar animal on a separate occasion, reflecting some of the 'cadborosaurus' reports from British Columbia... Alleged Florida 'sea monster' footage taken by Gene Sowerwine caused much excitement when it was revealed on an episode of MonsterQuest in 2007, but it was later found to show a manatee with an injured tail and a wayward bearded seal."
Then, too, let's remember the 1901 report of an Everglades sea monster said to have a head like a cross between a deer and a catfish. But until someone shows me a specimen of something, I'm not buying any of it.
Yet another crazy critter to watch out for in the wilds of Interzone: not only do we have bears, panthers, pythons, monkeys, giant grasshoppers and giant snails, we have monitor lizards. Nile monitors, native to Africa, have somehow gained a foothold in our ecosystem and have been thriving in Florida since at least 1990.
On the eastern side of the state, the monitors seem to be concentrated in the area from Palm Beach through Miami, and then following down south into the keys, especially Key Largo. On the gulf side, their numbers are rapidly spreading outward from the Cape Coral area, including all nearby islands (Sanibel Island, Captiva Island, Pine Island, and Gasparilla Island) and as far north as Siesta Key and Sarasota.
Wild iguanas are also an increasing problem in Florida. Like the monitor lizards, they disrupt native species like birds, turtles and crocodiles by eating their eggs and competing for food. There are an estimated 10,000 feral iguanas on Boca Grande alone, and Lee County has spent over $100,000 trying to trap them. But you know how it is; once these invasive aliens start layin' their eggs in the primordial soup that is Florida, you might as well just throw up your hands and just watch and see how it all comes out.
