If you know our Daughter #2, you would know that a visit from her is high-energy and full of laughter. After dropping my phone into the Bimini Basin on Friday, I knew I had to put it behind me as quickly as possible to soak up the happiness of having a visitor. I asked for and received about three minutes of ugly crying by myself at the loss of the last month’s worth of pictures from our son’s visit and Christmas and all my dolphin videos. Then it was time to move on.

After our time at Bimini Basin and Ding Darling, we went back to Salty Sam’s in Fort Myers Beach. We had been there before, but it was safe, comfortable, and overflowing with things to do.

Food

Salty Sam’s has two restaurants, which we ate at several times over the two times we were there. I like the cocktails better at Parrot Key, but I find the food is better at the Original Shrimp Dock. I liked the rum runners and Caribbean Old Fashioneds at Parrot Key and the short rib pizza at the Shrimp Dock. The bread pudding at the Shrimp Dock and the chocolate lava cake at Parrot Key were both fantastic. The Shrimp Dock has a “Dueling Pianos” performance Thursday to Sunday (but we just heard them Friday and Saturday, so call ahead), and they were so good. There’s also an ice cream store on site, as well as boarding for a pirate cruise and dolphin cruises.

We ate at other places in Fort Myers Beach, too. Nearby, we at at Bonita Shrimp Cafe, where the mimosas contained a LOT of “mim” and a splash of “osas,” if “mim” is champagne. The grilled shrimp was fantastic and better than the fried, in our opinion. We had a bird who joined us for lunch and had no fear whatsoever.

We also ate at Doc’s Rum Bar and Grille. The rum cocktails were great, and the food was quite good. The chocolate banana bread pudding was the best dessert we’ve had so far. There are other locations beside this one, but this site has plenty of on-the-water seating. On Estero Island, we ate at Sunset Beach Tropical Grille, which was disappointing on so many levels. The food was blah, our drinks were not what we ordered. The music was AWFUL. We ate there for lunch and were happy to be finished.

Another place we ate was Plaka, a Greek restaurant. The food there was great, and our daughter was thrilled that our waiter looked like Jason Mamoa. Back on the mainland, our daughter and I ate at Pincher’s, which was great. We had a couple appetizers and drinks, which were plentiful. The waitress talked our daughter into a “bucket” of mojitos, which was a 32 ounce bucket filled with mostly ice and about the equivalent of two mimosas. I ordered a sangria, which ended up coming in two glasses because it was two-for-one but you get both at the same time. So that was weird, but our two appetizers were FANTASTIC.

Entertainment

We did a few things for entertainment. We spent a day at the beach. An umbrella and three chairs cost $31 for the day. Owen and our daughter went parasailing, which was about $250. The minimum weight allowed was 200 pounds, so our daughter couldn’t go alone. We walked along the beach, which was quite busy on a Sunday. It was a perfectly lovely day. It’s one of those places where you can leave your stuff in your chair to swim and be reasonably confident that it will be there when you get back. The water was chilly but we commented on how warm it had to be in Wisconsin to jump in the lake at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and it was much warmer in Florida that day than those spring and fall days in Wisconsin where the kids would put on swimsuits and jump into the lake as if it were a hot August afternoon.

We enjoy mini golf, and there were two courses 2.4 and 2.7 miles away. It’s a long walk, but we did it. Twice. Smugglers Cove has live alligators that you can feed for a fee. The other one had a jungle theme. I liked Smugglers Cove, and our daughter preferred the one with the jungle theme. Guess the one where we each won?

Our daughter and I went on a dolphin cruise. She hadn’t seen more than a couple dolphins on our cruises on our boat, so we thought we’d try to see some. It was disappointing. We saw a handful of dolphins from a distance, but if you’ve seen dolphins swim in the wake of your boat, it’s just kind of “meh” seeing them from afar. We did learn, however, that a dolphin pod will temporarily kick out a dolphin who misbehaves. So the dolphin we saw that was throwing a catfish up in the air (which dolphins don’t even eat!), was probably one of those booted from the pod. The boat driver thought this guy must have made some particulary egregious act because he seemed to be away from his pod for a long time.

We also went to Lovers Key State Park, where she and I watched a family of manatees playing. That was a fun treasure of a memory! She then scoured the beach for seashells and picked up many sand dollars and the itty bitty tiny shells she favors.

On the way out of the park, I tripped over the edge of the paved sidewalk. I sat on the ground for a minute to assess the damage. I managed to put my hands out in front of me to catch myself and heard a pop from my arm. I tipped forward and scratched my favorite Costa sunglasses. Thankfully, they took the brunt of the hit as my face hit the pavement. When I fall, I fall spectacularly!

After sitting for a moment, I determined that I wasn’t going to imminently die. My knees were ok, one of my hands was bleeding, and my arm hurt. Of course, this happened approximately 4 hours before our daughter had to leave for the airport. To be continued…

Transportation

There’s public transportation available in the area, which we used quite a bit. It’s a 1.4 mile walk from Salty Sam’s to Times Square, the tourist spot on Fort Myers Beach. It’s a relatively easy walk, and we did it a few times. There’s also a trolley, which they call the “Trollee” because it’s in Lee County. Get it? There are two relevant routes: One goes from the beach to away from the beach. The other goes along the beach. Each ride is 75 cents. The website says you can buy one- and three-day passes, but that appears to be bad information as one of the drivers said they don’t do passes anymore.

So when we went to Lovers Key, we walked the 1.4 miles to Times Square, then boarded the Trollee to Lovers Key. It’s a great way to travel. While we were there, masks were required. There was a box of free masks available on each trollee.

The Trollee took us to Lovers Key. Normally, the Trollee picks up at the park every half hour, but at this time staffing is such that there is only one Trollee running and it only picks up every hour. This would have been good information to know ahead of time.

Grocery getting was a bit of a hassle at Salty Sam’s. There’s no grocery within walking distance. We used Instacart once. When we were here, there were shortages, so the store was out of a lot of things we wanted. I had to text with the shopper a lot to get what we wanted (which was fine. He was delightful.). Another time, we used an uber to get groceries. That’s just an expensive way to get there and back.

Doctor Visit

So after my fall, we had to race back to the boat because our daughter and Owen had to catch flights home and to work. We took the Trollee from Lovers Key to Times Square, which took about 35 minutes. Then we walked the 1.4 miles back the boat. My arm hurt, but it didn’t necessarily seem broken. Nothing looked out of place, and there wasn’t immediate bruising. I just hurt, and there was a little swelling.

There might have been a tiny bit of denial happening, because now just isn’t a good time for my first broken bone.

By the time Owen got back from his business trip on Friday, it was obvious that my arm wasn’t going to fix itself. A Walgreen’s wrist brace kept it from wiggling around all willy nilly, but I had to get it looked at. So on a beautiful Saturday morning that would have been a perfect beach day or park day or just-about-anything-else day, we checked our insurance and went to an urgent care. The first one we ubered to had a 3-hour wait and no Xray technician on site. We ubered to a second location in Cape Coral with just a 2-hour wait. After about 1.75 hours, I was taken back and examined. An Xray confirmed that I had a distal radius fracture. Sigh. They gave me a new brace that immobilized my thumb, which, I’ve learned, is an under-appreciated appendage and pretty much rendered my hair undoable for the foreseeable future. I have a name of an orthopedic surgeon and will make an appointment asap. There was a Publix across the street, so we used the opportunity to grab groceries before grabbing an uber back to the boat.

The urgent care doctor said I will probably need to see the orthopedic surgeon two or three times in the next 6-8 weeks, so our Bahamas plans are in limbo. Also, we can’t stay in this marina for much longer, as they have other reservations coming in. We think we might go back to Bimini Basin, but my not being able to pull up the anchor one-handed is going to require some changes in the way we handle things for the near future. We’ll see.

(Update: Saw the surgeon. The bone had already moved right back into place. No surgery required. Hallelujah!)

Weather

We had planned to leave Salty Sam’s on Saturday morning, but my arm and impending weather put the brakes on our plans. We were expecting wind and waves Sunday through Tuesday. Sunday morning we woke up to a green sky. We turned on the TV to see wall-to-wall weather coverage with five tornado warnings at the same time! Thankfully, we avoided the worst of the weather as it went north, south, and around us. We pray for the man we saw on the news who was trapped in his house and saved by police and firefighters. He took the time to thank them and God during his interview in front of his destroyed house.

It was an eventful week here on Our Dash. Still, how blessed are we that the same week I lost my phone and broke my wrist could still be a fantastic week? We’re so grateful for our daughter’s visit and that we were able to do such fun things in the throes of winter.