day 4

click on 'day 4' in the title to link to photos (they are all unedited)
The weather continues to be cool, happily the sun was out today so it was pleasant. I am running out of clean warm clothes and may do laundry if this continues.
Blair and I started today by strolling Manatee Park in Ft Myers. It's located next to the power plant and the manatees come in to the canal for the warm water. We saw lots of manatees because of the weather.
We spent the afternoon taking a swamp buggy eco-tour at Babcock Ranch in Punta Gorda. It was a great place and our guide was terrific. We learned a lot about the history of the area and the wildlife that lives there now. Hard to take too many pix because we were in the bus not walking - but there are lots to see on my picasa page. Got to see alligators in the wild and a young one that the guide uses for demonstration. They have 2 captive southern cougars - both were once owned as pets, because their owners had them declawed they can't go back to the wild. I had never heard of cracker cattle before. This is another place I would recommend to anyone visiting in this area.
We ended our photo day at the beach. Lots of shore birds, including a great blue heron that seemed to be posing for us. We stayed and watched the sun going down - which caused the temperature to go down too!
Now I need to organize all my things because I will check out of Ft Myers tomroow and be in Tampa tomorrow night.