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Category: sanibel
Fort Myers
5/17/13 – 5/18/13 Miles MPG Average Speed 458 44 49 Driving listening:
5/17/13 – 5/18/13 Priceline Retail $ Savings % Savings Crowne Plaza Fort Myers (3.5 star) $68.81
($58 bid)$104.16
($93 base rate)$35.35 34% Friday
I drove down early Friday and was on the Sanibel causeway by noon to do some kayaking (details on my kayaking blog).
After kayaking I was very hungry. Runkeeper said I burned 1100 calories on that paddle, but Runkeeper can’t take into account the wind and currents. I’m thinking the mile and a half from the point to the causeway into strong winds and out-going tide counts as 3x. So I felt entirely justified in having a big dinner.
Lee Roy Selmon’s is a southwest Florida chain, and I prefer to avoid chains when traveling, but it had a big advantage when it came up in the Urbanspoon app’s random selector: It was really, really close to my hotel. After 8-miles of paddling and the discovery
that my sunscreen was defective, I was not in the mood to drive far. I wanted pretty good food, close by, and a lot of it. The second advantage was that it was Happy Hour.
The server brought me some BBQ rolls to start. These are warm, tasty, yeast rolls covered in butter, garlic, and BBQ sauce.
These were really good and I followed them with soft pretzels and cheese sauce with bacon ($3 for Happy Hour).
Good pretzels covered in coarse, crunchy salt. The cheese sauce was a little thin, but good. And for the entrée, I had their pulled pork with sides of baked beans and maple-bacon creamed corn.
The beans were really good, sweet with a hint of molasses, but they also had green peppers, which I’m not fond of. The creamed corn was good, but a little too sweet – which is an unusual thing for me to say. It’s normally served with the fried chicken and waffles, so that may be why – I think the maple syrup is overused, making it too sweet and thin, but it could go well with the fried chicken and waffles.
The pork itself was excellent and the sauce was a good compliment – sweet and sticky, without being overpowering. It was well-trimmed, with very little fat.
For dessert, I got the bread pudding with praline sauce and ice cream to-go and ate it back at the hotel.
So after an eight-hour paddle that afternoon, I was discovering that 1) I was out of shape and starting to hurt, and, B) my sunscreen had expired and I was the proud owner of a nasty, if oddly shaped, sunburn. So I stopped by the front desk sundry shop to get some pain killers … only to find that they were out of stock until Monday. Well, not entirely out of stock.
The three girls working the front desk assured me it would be effective and have no ill-effects.
Sanibel Island
I was in Fort Myers for the weekend, so brought my kayak with me to get in some paddling time around Sanibel. I left home early Friday morning and arrived at the Sanibel Causeway around 12:00.
From the causeway, I could see Fort Myers Beach in the distance, as well as the Sanibel lighthouse on the southern tip of the island.
I paddled toward the nearest channel marker to have the last time in the channel as possible. The bayside was flat calm with no wind or waves, at least until boats started coming through the channel.
Rounded the point to paddle the Gulf side.
A pod of dolphins passed between me and the beach.
A little while after the dolphins a huge loggerhead sea turtle surfaced about twenty feet from me – no picture because he got his breath and went back under before I could turn the camera on.
I took a break on the beach on the way out and on the return.
The calm water of the bay was gone when I rounded the point, the wind had picked up and the tide was going out, so it was over a mile into the wind against the current.
Once off the water, I discovered two things:
First, the front hatch of my boat has a leak, so I was shipping water when waves broke over the bow. I drained quite a bit before loading up, but still had saltwater hitting my windshield in every decelerating, right-turn for two days.
Second, my sunscreen was less than effective.
Ow.