Kitchy in Fort Myers Beach

---

There isn't much to write today, as it was a pretty uneventful day. We departed the Chelsea House at about 9am, after another mediocre breakfast of cold cereal, and retraced our driving steps up highway 1 through all of the various beautiful keys: Big Pine, Sugar Loaf, Marathon, Matecumbe, Key Largo...and out of the keys. We raced along the highway 41 through the everglades, passing inumerable air boat ride providers, through a number of state wildlife refuge like places, and what I believe was an First Nations Reservation....and out we popped in Naples Florida. Another 30 minutes to an hour up the coast and we were driving through Fort Myers Beach and into our kitchy and cute old FLorida hotel, the Sun Deck Inn. The plastic glowing palm tree, garish colours, multiple decks and rope railings all combine for a kitchy and tacky, but likable, facade for this affordable hotel. Our room is large (especially coming out of Chelsea House) with a full kitchen, couch and sitting area, bed area and bathroom, with a front and back deck. It also has a kind of cool layer of worn out grit on it, which makes it feel a bit homey, like an old apartment, which is lkind of nice. We settled in, grabbed our swiming gear, and headed to the beach.

The beach in Fort Myers is huge. Very deep, super long, snow white, with water that is actually really quite warm. the little tode pools are almost as hot as a hot tub, and the ocean it self is like a well heated pool. It is quite odd, but nice. We took a quick dip, walked the centre of the beach area checking out restaurants and stuff, and then headed back to the hotel to relax and get ready for dinner. We decided to go to Doc Ford's, a port side restaurant with patio seating and a focus on sea food. We learned it was the restauran tof a well known author, who wrote a series of action mystery novels about a character named Doc Ford. I even bought on eof the books (they are mostly set in the Fort Myers area I beleive). We ordered the buffalo shrimp to start, and I had fish tacos, and Jackie had a fish sandwich. We are eating so much seafood. I keep saying to Jackie, if you don't like seafood and come down here, you'll leave loving it. I'm loving it.

That's it for today. Beach time, relaxing and reading tomorrow.

---