Sanibel – part 2

My sister and her family arrived 2 weeks into my 3 week stay.  They are from Wisconsin, so of course the first sand sculpture they made was a snowman!  Below is Parker and Summer and their snowman, I mean sandman -

Below is work on their Sanibel Holiday greetings and the final results -

  My sister, Amy, and 2 of her daughters, Chelsea and Morgan putting the finishing touches to the Holiday greeting!.

Above are my nieces and nephews around the snowman – Gavin, Morgan, Parker, Chelsea and Summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morgan asked her mom to take a few pictures and I snapped some while Amy was taking “official” pictures.

I visited the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp sanctuary twice while in South West Florida.  It’s a beautiful place.  I didn’t see as many birds this time as I did in March, but it was still a great place to visit!

If you look closely at this swamp lily, you will see in the lower right and corner a small tree frog.  Below is a close-up of him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also went to Shark’s Valley in the Everglades twice.  The first time, I went by myself and rode my bike around the 15 mile trail.  The second time I went with my Mom, brother-in-law (Tom) and my nephew (Gavin).  Tom and I rode bikes around the trail, while my mom and Gavin took the tram.  Unfortunately this day was a cold and we didn’t see as much as I did the previous week.

Part of the welcoming committee.  He is guarding the bike path that you can see at the bottom of the picture.

Even the birds like the bike/tram path!

My mom and I rode our bikes to the campground that I was supposed to stay at.  They have a mini-zoo in the campground.  Below is a picture of my mom getting to know a campground resident -

Other sand and shell sculptures by my sister’s family are below.  They joked that they should put out a tip jar because so many people took pictures of them.  The picture below is a fish that they did created using pen shells as the scales. 

The starfish above is made out of urchins.  There were thousands of these urchins on the beach this trip.  I’ve been to Sanibel many times and never seen this many urchins.

They also made a large sandcastle.  Below is a picture of the castle and then a close-up of the center part to show the detail.

A few pictures of folks just goofing around -

Morgan and Summer, Summer is the one upside down!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parker found a coconut and decided to see what it tasted like!

 

Parker, Chelsea and Summer out for a run on the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

Chelsea showing us her fish face--

 

 

 

 

 

This isn’t something we made, but I found it on one of my walks on the beach.  Somebody had made a Christmas tree out of shells and seaweed.  Notice the starfish on top of the tree.

I’ll end with a couple more pictures of the beach -