3rd Field Trip: Fort Myers Beach

I decided to take my third field trip, the marine environments trip, to the historical district of Fort Myers Beach, Florida. I visited a lot of sights at fort myers beach. These sites were the Matanza's Pass Preserve, The Historic Society, The Historic society annex, the rain barrel, Beach Elementary School, Pink Shell Cottages, The Mound House, and St.Raphael's Church. I really enjoyed this trip because I had no idea that these places were even at Fort Myers Beach. My usual places on the beach were Lani Kai and Lovers Key, I didn't even know there was a historical side to Fort Myers Beach.



 I'll start with Matanzas Pass Preserve. First thing I have to say is, I did not dress to walk through a nature trail. I thought it as gonna be a nice trail on wooden planks or something. Boy was I wrong, I walked through bugs and mud and dirt, but I have to admit it was exciting. I also got lost because I wanted to take the trail to the overview, but somehow I ended up in the deep wilderness on the other side of the trails. I did see a lot of interesting things.

I brought a couple of friends with me and one of them pointed out something moving in the trees, she swears it was a monkey, but I saw it too and it looked like a cat, but it was too big to be a house cat. After I did a little research I think it might have been a bobcat.

We also so sand crabs, spiders, bugs, osprey, egrets, and fish. I was hoping to find an alligator because of the swamp like murky water, but I had no luck.



 Matanzas Pass also had a lot of information posted along the trails.

 

 Here are some extra pictures from Matanzas Pass:

See any alligators?

I think this hole was dug by some type of animal

If you look closely you can see raccoon tracks.

A birds home?

I finally made it to the overview

 

I also went to other historical sites around Fort Myers Beach.

The mound house was pretty cool, but I wanted to go inside and look around. Unfortunately they were in the middle of an archaeological dig but I am definitely going to back when they open the site which should be in January.

This is a piece of the sidewalk outside of the Beach Elementary school. All of the sidewalk outside of the school had names and dates carved into it. I thought it was really neat to think that 30 years ago some nine year old was carving their name into their school sidewalk, and now I'm standing in that same spot.

 

These two pictures were of St. Raphael's Church. I thought this building was really unique and interesting. Another cool thing that happened was the pastor/priest lived next door and saw me taking pictures and gave me a tour of the inside. It is a beautiful structure and its amazing to see how architecture was back in the 1950s when it was first built.