Come for the conference, stay for the vacation: A photo essay

I have been so busy that I was (am) desperate for a break. So when one of the five conferences I am attending in May-June ended at lunchtime on a Saturday, and it wasn't substantially cheaper to fly home the same day, I decided to spend an extra night at the hotel. Originally Dear Husband had to work that weekend but he needed downtime as much as I did, so he took the weekend off to attend our nephew's high school graduation in Ohio. In Florida I had good time connecting with friends old and new; co-presented two workshops; and absorbed what felt like a firehose of information. At last year's conference I had split my time between medical content, publication advice, and career development. This time I live-Facebooked areas in which I am weak, like the musculoskeletal exam, cardiac devices, and hormone therapy. The organization's staff try to keep things light, so that's me with the conference mascot, a stuffed yeti doll wearing snorkel gear. The plenaries were appropriately inspiring. I was a member of the winning trivia team for the second year in a row (and runner-up the year before that), so I've decided to sit out next time and contribute a category of medical history questions. Then I spent ~25 hours recharging my batteries. 

I was tickled to fly out on Maryland One.

Approach to Ft. Lauderdale.

View from my balcony on the 32nd floor. I think that's the highest floor I've ever stayed on.

It was a looong way down.

Society of

General

Internal
Medicine

They ran out of blue Meds Peds ribbons, so I wrote it on the bottom of my badge.

My institution hosts a dinner for current and former members.

I staged photos of the program as part of my posts. The gold rectangle is my business card holder with pearl inlay that was a graduation gift from My Awesome Parents.

George (NYU) and I defended our trivia title!

UPMC Med Peds had a great showing, especially of residents.

I was sad nobody noticed the scarf that I designed using Renaissance anatomical illustrations.

This medical conference prefers pricey hotels, but I was still shocked that the bill for a working lunch at the restaurant was $54 (one salad, one dessert, no alcohol or tip). I heard they were charging north of $20-35 per cocktail. After the conference ended, I walked to the nearby grocery store to stock up for the rest of my stay. Two lunches, one breakfast (sans yogurt pilfered from the conference), one dinner, and snacks cost $48. I figured out how to make hot tea with the espresso machine in the room.

Hotel pool on my way to sunrise yoga. The clouds protected us from the worst of the sun's rays, but we still sweated through our workout while the yogi--a young man from Los Angeles--explained anatomy, philosophized about mind over matter, and reminded us how "dope" our bodies are for the things that they can do or have done.

During my mini-vacation, I played games on my phone and ate dinner in bed while watching a movie. I got to spend time in the ocean waves and in the hotel pool. After showering and checking out I read on the back deck until the sun was high and the temps were uncomfortable, so I moved inside to recharge my devices and write this blog post, a sort of farewell postcard for both you and me.

She sells seashells by the seashore ~ Saturday

 

Saturday, March 15, 2025
Drive 1 hour for breakfast at Lighthouse Café à Sanibel Beach or drive up to Captiva Beach (20 min)?
10:30am tour at Sanibel Historical Museum & Village, 10am-4pm, $15
Lunch at Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille
Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum & Aquarium, 10am-5pm, $12
4-5pm return rental car (45-minute drive)
6pm Flight #4358 departs RSW à arrives 8:25pm Pittsburgh; buy dinner in airport

The most anticipated day of our vacation was Saturday, which I had decided to spend on Sanibel Island, being only 45 minutes from the Ft. Myers Airport. Several months ago, when a friend came to visit while I researching our itinerary, we went to the Arcade Comedy Theater, where my place prompt ("Sanibel Island seashell museum") was chosen. The troupe of talented improv artists performed a hilarious 20-30-minute sketch about a seashell museum as a family business in a rivalry with another museum in the Seychelles, and I won a pair of free tickets to another comedy shop.

Fast forward to today, which began with packing up at the AirBnB. On our way up the coast we passed preparations for a St. Patrick's Day parade. First stop: breakfast at the Lighthouse Cafe. Their "best breakfast in the world" and mimosas have a loyal following, but I wasn't in the mood for alcohol, and we liked the food a lot less than the decor and the owner's bonhomie.

Second stop: the Sanibel Historical Museum & Village, where we were the first visitors for the day. It's a collection of buildings with artifacts about the island that has been variably inhabited. The Calusa Indians who called it home seem to have fled from the Spanish to Cuba by 1736. Fishermen camped there sometimes. One hundred years later, the Americans attempted to sell plots of land and cultivate the island, but the 1875 census reported a population of 0. The lighthouse built in 1884 seems to have anchored a new farming community that thrived until the "Great Miami" hurricane flooded the fields with salt water in 1926. Then they turned to fishing.

The exhibit quality varied, with the older ones quite amateur and in disrepair, while they clearly got some money more recently (pandemic relief dollars?) to make more professional banners hung up in an outdoor pavilion. One building is set aside for Sanibel's Black residents, whose children were bussed to Ft. Myers to attend school for thirty years(!). But sure, "there was racial harmony on the island." 

The most recent hurricane damaged some of the buildings, including the one they usually use as a gift shop. The Bailey's General Store's gas pumps are inoperable but the rocking chairs still very much do work! Of course I was interested in the food and ration coupons. Check out the shell art below.

Third stop: lunch at Doc Ford's Rum Bar and Grille, a local chain that was apparently founded and named by the author of a series of detective novels featuring that character. I had never heard of it, and although there was an extensive cocktail menu, I still wasn't in the mood for alcohol, so we ate our lunch and then continued down the main drag to the piece de resistance.

Fourth stop was the National Shell Museum! And I must insist that you notice that it is the "shell" museum not the "seashell" museum. Because here they want to teach you about all kinds of shelled creatures (such as snails) and marine life. While waiting for the excellent explanatory video to start, we enjoyed an exhibit on the use of shells in fashion, although it looks like some poor intern didn't understand that pixels don't scale up, so some of the professionally produced images were unfortunately not in focus.

Can you find Dory and Nemo?

Seahorses!

The museum has only recently re-opened after the destruction of Hurricane Ian 3 years ago, and its exhibits have not entirely been re-built. But for a small museum, it is mighty, and who doesn't enjoy a wet petting zoo or recreating a silly fish-face photo from their honeymoon (that's me at the jump).

So long, Sanibel Island!

If you missed the beginning of this series, start here.

Kayaking among the mangroves ~ Friday

Friday, March 14, 2025
Brunch: Hoot’s Breakfast & Lunch OR Mango’s Dockside Bistro ARRIVE BY NOON for 12:30pm Rookery Bay kayak tour (Mangroves and Mudflats), $65 + $10 parking
Snack: Mr. Bentley’s Homemade Ice Cream vs Annie’s Ice Cream Parlour
Dinner: leftovers or something easy (Heidi’s German Restaurant, Ft. Myers?)

Friday Dear Husband and I drove back down the SW coast of Florida to have brunch at a local chain in a shopping plaza, where we seemed to hit the tail end of the breakfast rush. This was fine by us, because we wanted to eat up before spending 3 hours out on the water in kayaks.

This appears to be the only photo I took the whole day. It is my crab eggs Benedict with a token fruit cup. After brunch we drove to the launch point, where we were quite early. We applied sunscreen and then just stood around in the hot sun / mild shade waiting for the staff to scarf their lunch and the other participants to arrive. Finally it was time to put our supplies into a borrowed waterproof bag and shove off in our tandem kayak.

Our two guides, one a marine biologist who had grown up in Maryland and called out our Orioles baseball caps--the Chesapeake Bay is the continent's largest estuary--were full of knowledge about the Everglades. They taught us about the three colors of mangrove trees and how lifecycles changed with the tides. We had left our phones in the car to be safe, so luckily, they were also taking photos! 

Parent osprey returning to the nest

WHAT IS THIS FACE I'M MAKING???

Part of the fun was hauling ourselves under low-hanging branches.

Then it was on to the beach! As often as we have visited Florida, we have spent precious little time on the sand and none in the water, because the weather hasn't cooperated. I got a recommendation from our guide to go to Tigertail Beach for the rest of the afternoon, so imagine my dismay when we parked the car, hiked down the wooden walkway, and greeted...a still, inland lagoon. No waves. Squishy mud instead of sand. And it smelled kind of funny. Sitting disconsolately on a covered bench eating my apple, I watched other people wade across the lagoon at a certain point and disappear into the dunes. There were way more cars in the lot than people at the water's edge, so I convinced DH to follow me in that direction.

Sure enough, on the other side of the shallow sandbar was a grove through which a rivulet cut a path just wide enough for one person to walk. After a few minutes, we emerged into the sun on a small rise above an honest-to-God Gulf of Mexico sandy beach. We dropped our stuff and waded out, because all I wanted to do was stand in the breakers. They weren't as big as I wanted, and it wasn't as warm as DH wanted, so after half an hour we trooped back. I had forgotten the beach towels at our AirBnB, so we used our shirts to dry off in the sketchy restroom trailers before getting back in the car.

I had planned to taste-test Marco Island's rival ice cream shops, but we were tired and sunburned, having not re-applied sunscreen often enough, so home we drove for a dinner of leftovers and a movie on Netflix: The Woman in Gold.

Day 6: the trip's tongue-twister