We woke up the next morning and headed for Sanibel Island. When we lived in South Carolina one summer, Sean and I caught the shelling bug. When we heard Sanibel was voted the best shelling beach in the North America, we knew we wanted to take a trip there and thought it would be so fun with our kids! We rented a car and drove from Orlando, and I actually loved the drive because we drove past orange grove after orange grove and it was a nice break from being on our feet all day. We made it to our condo, the Sundial, which was awesome, and immediately went to the beach. We were all excited about the possibility of finding sea shells and were happy when we came across a few cool ones within the first few minutes.
On our second day on Sanibel Island, we hired Captain Randy to take us boating and out to a non-inhabited island. It was so fun! As we were leaving the marina we saw a manatee swimming in the harbor. Early into our ride, we saw dolphins and they followed us and played in the surf behind the boat. It was so fun to watch and a highlight of the trip for me.
We were all a little surprised when we saw this orange snake swimming through the water!
After boating, we went to Turner beach to look for shells. The waves crash near the shore here so we didn't swim, but there were tons of little shells EVERYWHERE! There were people with fancy metal baskets that would come drop load after load of shells on the beach and sift through them really fast. I assume they were looking for the highly prized (and very rare) junonia shell. Our family found lots of little horn shells here and a few lettered olives also.
Sorting through their treasures on our condo's balcony:
We spent the rest of the evening playing on the beach at our condo and swimming in the pool. We even built a sand castle covered in shells.
We started our third day in Sanibel with a self-guided kayaking tour through the mangroves. This ended up being really cool. We saw some cool birds and the scenery was pretty awesome.
After kayaking, we went back to Turner Beach and searched for shells again for a little bit.
We weren't finding much at Turner Beach that we hadn't already found, so we went to a different section of the Island by the lighthouse to try our luck there. No major finds, but Jackson did find a starfish and the kids had fun playing on the beach. Jackson and I walked down to the lighthouse together and searched through some of the mangrove branches by the shore.
After that, we headed back to our condo and headed to the pool. While we were sitting there, we saw some people come up from the beach with a bag full of big seashells. Up to this point, we hadn't found anything very big, so we were intrigued. I ended up asking them where they found them, and to our surprise, they said just at the beach at the hotel, about a half a mile down the coast. We headed that direction with high hopes and we were definitely not disappointed! There was a small sand bar and we found a ton of conch shells, whelks, etc. It was SO fun. They were easy to spot and we also found a bunch digging with out feet. The kids were so into it and we all felt like we hit the jackpot! It was honestly one of those pinch me moments where everything just came together and life felt so good. It was so much fun as a parent to see the kids' enthusiasm and I was so happy we got to have that experience.
It was also a really beautiful night. We watched the sunset as we were finding shells and it was just gorgeous. I truly could not have asked for a better final night of our trip.
On our final day of the trip, Jackson and I woke up and walked down the beach before heading back and getting packed up. People on the beach told us the amount of shells we found the night before was not typical. We felt very lucky!
We laid out the shells and were quite impressed with the collection we'd created over the past couple of days. We found all sorts of different types! I loved them all, but my favorites were the tulips, the lettered olives, and the conches. We picked our favorites and packed them up carefully for home.
After that, we hit the local farmer's market and had some lunch before driving back to Orlando to catch our flight home.
We put some of our very favorite shells in our fish bowl at home and have it sitting on the shelf in our library to remember the amazing time we had in Sanibel. We've talked about the trip a lot since we've been home. I am so grateful for the opportunity our family had to take this vacation together.
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