2 Nights at Shell Island
Stats for November 16, 2018
Origin: Fort Walton Beach
Destination: Shell Island Anchorage
Distance: 69 miles
Speed: 9.1 mph
Time on the Move: 7 hours and 34 minutes
While looking up the stats above, I noticed that this was our 63rd day of travel since we left Harrison Township, MI on July 19th. Wow!! That means 63 amazing places we’ve explored and 63 blog posts!! I’m pretty sure it is also day #121 of our trip. Still lots of adventures to come!!
Waking up in Fort Walton Beach it was COLD!! Now I get that Michigan already has snow on the ground, so I really shouldn’t complain, but this is just not what we expected for weather in Florida so early in the season. Just a sign that we need to keep on moving south!!
We enjoyed the bright sunshine all day. Lucky for us (on days like today) our black bimini top and full enclosure on the flybridge heat the sundeck and the bridge up quickly! Tobin looked out the window for a while and then wanted to ask Siri how many sparkles are on the ocean water. Great question, sweet Tobin. I’m not sure Siri knows, but it sure made me smile.
After traveling through the sparkling bay for a while, we moved through a long skinny channel. We looked for gators, but no luck…
We had a pretty long travel day to get here, but our hearts were set on getting our toes in the sand before sunset. Shell Island did not disappoint–it was exactly what we were hoping for!!
We were watching a forecasted weather window for a few days that would give us a calm period allowing us to cross the Gulf of Mexico to Tarpon Springs. As each day to the window drew closer, the weather was more accurate and it appeared we would have a chance to cross on Sunday or Monday night (2 days later). We still needed to cover over 80 miles to get to our preferred jumping off point, but we also loved exploring Shell Island the night before and didn’t want to leave so soon. After all, we worked really hard to get to this beautiful beach, so we wanted to enjoy it. In a game time decision (which has become quite the norm) we decided to stay put another day to enjoy and have a long travel day the next day. I’m so glad we did! This full day on Shell Island was wonderful!
We had an amazing day on Shell Island! We saw about 6 people, 2 dogs, 4 passing boats, and a few passing planes all day. We talked with one lady who was working on rebuilding a structure on the island. She said the hurricane wiped it right down to the foundation, and they suspect that the entire island was covered with water during/after the storm. She said in the summer it is quite the party island, so they have a pretty basic “pole barn” style building that they can lock up completely when they aren’t there.
This was such a great stop for us. When I came back from my run I told Mike I found my new favorite place. I’ve checked out the price of lots, but unfortunately you aren’t really supposed to build on the island. I wonder how many places along the way I will find that I want to move to or visit again? This is definitely on that list!! We need to keep moving on to be able to make our weather window, so we’re off. Thanks for reading and following our adventure!!
2 thoughts on “2 Nights at Shell Island”
You wont find any alligators in salt or brackish water….only in fresh water…..but when you get to the southern part of Florida, in Florida bay, if you’re really lucky, you might see a Crocodile…..they live in the salt water….but are very rare and usually only found in the thousand island areas of the southern Everglades.
We just saw an alligator yesterday (or I guess maybe it was a crocodile?) at Cayo Costa State Park. It was awesome to see from afar, but I wasn’t thrilled that he started swimming after us and seemed to be following us. I’m sure I was just paranoid, but the fact we were in an inflatable boat didn’t make me feel much safer.