Captiva 2011: Day Five

Day five on Captiva was a busy one, so it gets its own post!

We started the day early with a trip to the beach!  It was warm and slightly breezy, just perfect for enjoying the sand and surf.

It was Mollie's first time at the beach and her first time in the ocean.  She seemed to like it well enough.

Baylor, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the sand or water.  It was probably due in part to his cold and the lack of sleep he was getting from Mollie waking up at night, his cold, and the early sunrise streaming in the windows.  But he's also a little gun-shy when it comes to new things, so we just go with the flow and try to gently encourage him to expand his horizons.

He was a fan of the white ibises we saw down there, though, and really enjoyed watching them run and eat along the beach.

We finally reached the beach play ground, and Baylor was able to loosen up a little bit.  While he initially didn't want to go down the slide we had come to see, he was all about the little blue tunnel.

Mollie, fearless as she is, was ready to try the slide right away.  Unfortunately, she needed a lot of help going down it because her bare legs kept sticking to the plastic.  She still had a bunch of fun, though.

She has been enamored of plastic kiddie booster seats lately, and the bottom of the slide must have felt like one to her because she spent a considerable amount of time just kicking her legs around down there.

The sand was a bit disconcerting, though, and she tried very hard to shake it off her hands as best she could.

Baylor, after much coaxing, finally went down the slide.

But his demeanor at the bottom soon told us that he wasn't feeling his best.

Mollie, ever concerned about her brother, checked up on him ... and sort of tried to boot him from her new favorite spot.

He's quite a bit bigger than her, though, so she left and was content to just walk around the sand.

My dad, Bryson, and I had a fishing date later in the day, so we headed back to the condo to have some lunch beforehand.  On our way back, we stopped by the harbor area and were able to spot a manatee sleeping away the midday in the water.

After a quick bite, the guys and I headed out on the open seas for some fishing fun!  A bunch of birds wished us well as we made our way into the gulf.

On land the weather was a little hot and muggy that day, but out on the water it was perfect ... just a slight breeze to cool everything off.

The guys readied themselves for our fishing adventure while I snapped some pictures.

I'll be honest - I'm not a huge fan of the details of fishing.  Since childhood I have had a special place in my heart for fish (I even wanted to be an ichthyologist for the longest time), and the thought of shoving a hook through the head of a fish just seems a little cruel to me.  Luckily, our captain did all the baiting for us, so it was left to me to just get past that part of it.  I only caught two fish, so the trip wasn't overly "productive" for me, but I did enjoy just being out on the water with no small people clinging to me.

My dad, on the other hand, caught 22 fish!  He caught a couple sea trout keepers, and at one point he couldn't toss in a cast without bringing back a fish.  It was wild.

Bryson did well too, catching about 16 fish, including a couple keepers.

Our captain Tommy seemed a little puzzled that I was more content taking pictures of fish and birds than I was fishing, but that's just how I roll.  This cormorant ended up eating one of the too-small-to-keep fish my dad caught; apparently the fish are so traumatized after being caught that after being tossed back they just sit on the bottom of the ocean, making them easy prey for these diving birds.

Meanwhile, back at the condo, the kids were having a grand ol' time with Mom and Christine.  Mollie got to enjoy a little booster-seat-on-the-floor time.

And Baylor got to play Orba and solitaire on the iPad.

They even paused their play a bit to get a picture taken with Oma for Grandpa E's office.

While it was quite a busy day, we all had a lot of fun.

Hopefully I'll be able to post the rest of the vacation here soon!

Have a wonderful day!