The Great White Way: 5th Avenue South at Night

The perfect time and place for strolling around Naples with ice cream in hand.

Shoppers, diners, and strollers out after dark on 5th Ave.

Trees were lit up on their trunks and in their canopies by strings and balls of white lights.

Looking toward 5th Ave from the entrance to The Sugden Community Theatre.

(Driftwood) Lovers' Key State Park Beach

Also a good hike at Lovers' Key State Park: the beach. 2.5 miles in total, beautiful sand, funny shore birds tritcombersut (like sandpipers and plover), and really cool driftwood (although I'm not sure you still call it driftwood if the tree's still in the ground). And if you're really lucky, you might just run into a fashion photo shoot.

Sandpipers really like this spot of the beach.

These guys were doing a catalogue shoot for this newish footwear line spun off by a former founder/partner in the Crocs company. They're... something.

My dad and I suspect that this (and several other trees) was decorated around Christmas time. It's neat that beach combers have left them just so.

And then the driftwood forest. I plan to edit some of these when I am home to render them in black and white. Haven't seen driftwood this cool since a beach I visited in Costa Rica several years ago.

Wilderness Hiking: The Search for the Elusive Marshbunny

Today I took my dad hiking with me. We headed north to Bonita Springs and Lovers' Key State park. Great place for easy hikes on the beach or along the inner canals on the Black Island Trail. We took the longest loop, a whole 2.5 miles with Lee County's highest point: a 30-foot high hill that we didn't even notice was "the hill" until we finished the trail and realized that we hadn't encountered any other hills. And the entire time, I was on the lookout for one thing: the elusive Marsh Rabbit. Not to be confused with the March Hare. So I'll call it the "marshbunny". **not for use in s'mores

And along the way, we saw:

A gopher tortoise sunning outside its burrow. He was right by the path and completely unfazed by hikers and cyclists stopping to say hello.

Egrets, ibis, and herons along the inner waterways and by the gator pool (apparently sans gators at the time).

A gumbo limbo tree, often referred to as a "tourist tree" because of its red, peeling skin.

Morning glories popping up here and there, like by this sea grape plant.

And a very determined tree.

Sadly, no marshbunnies. Maybe next time I'll bring a banana. Bunnies love bananas. Trust me.

Tin City, Tomato Wine, and Shrimp. Lots of Shrimp.

Most tourist destinations have at least one tourist trap featuring some gimmicky theme (Dollywood, anyone?) loads of souvenir shops, restaurants featuring food supposedly representative of the area, and ridiculous prices for both. Tin City checks off a few of these items, but it's worth strolling around to have a look-see, and if you're really up for it, you can sample some tomato wine. And get the shrimp. No matter where you decide to eat, get the shrimp.

The Tasting Room for the Naples Winery

I've worked the wine business in Wisconsin for several years now, and I've certainly made my fair share of visits to our local wineries. Like Wisconsin, Florida is not much reputed for its locally-grown or locally-made wine. The varieties of grapes that will grow in such a hot, humid climate are natives (such as Muscadine) that tend to produce very grapey flavors. But the majority of wines produced in Florida, as in Wisconsin, utilize local fruits other than grapes. They're made by fermenting the fruit, as with grape wine, and often back-sweetened to make the flavor fruitier and more like juice from that fruit, rather than a dry wine (although Naples Winery does produce some nearly dry wines. And they are not as palatable as the sweet and semi-sweet ones).

Being the adventurous person that I am, I set out to try some of the more unique offerings in my tasting. To get a baseline feel for their style, I started with the Florida Banana Wine. Tasted like liquid banana chips. Apparently 10-12 pounds of bananas go into every bottle. On to 40 Karat, a wine made not with fruit but-you guessed it-carrots. Carrots don't make good wine. Unless good wine to you is oddly vegetal and not-quite-carrot peel tasting. I tried the one wine made with grapes (the aforementioned local Muscadine), and the semi-sweetness really made it taste a lot like Concord grape juice. Getting a little weirder, Midnight Sun wine is made by tossing roasted coffee beans in with the oranges. Yep, for those who like to take their coffee in the morning with an OJ chaser. Starts out tasting like their semi-sweet orange wine (which is vaguely orange-tasting), and finishes like coffee. Yep. But if you do make it into this winery, you really have to try Hot Sun, the tomato wine with a touch of jalepeño. I mulled over this one for a while. "Reminds me of a Bloody Mary, kind of," I said to the host. "Yeah, I had one customer say it tasted like a weak Bloody Mary!" We laughed. And then he proceeded to give me his opinion: Better with food, and good for cooking, like in a boullabaise. I could see it. But with this (and the other wines) going for $20 and up... I'll just use tomatoes and white wine. If I ever make boullabaise. Which I probably won't.

So I thought my Tin City adventure had concluded with my wine tasting, but the very next night we went back to dine at Pinchers. Being right next to water and all, they specialize in fresh, local seafood. I am still sad about missing Dungeness crab season on the west coast this year, so I seriously considered ordering the stone claw crab claws because they, too, are in season right here in Florida. But when pressed, I really find it difficult to pass up shrimp.

I knew about oysters, but who knew about these others?

Shrimp. While i don't recall a specific occasion, I am 99% positive that my first shrimp consumed was in Florida, possibly breaded and fried, and likely on the Fort Meyers beach. And I'm pretty sure that for years, the only shrimp I ever ate was in Florida because in northern Illinois, shrimp weren't available very often and/or they were expensive. At a very young age, I know I was ordering shrimp scampi because it made use of my favorite three ingredients: shrimp, garlic, and pasta (okay, and butter, of course). And I'm also sure that at one point after I'd grown up, I purchased shrimp from a reputable fish monger up north and was just a little disappointed because they weren't as good as Florida shrimp. Now, you could argue that seafood shipped to the middle of the country, even fresh-never-frozen, will never taste as good as right off the boats. I'd buy that argument. But what many people who have not visited the Gulf of Mexico do not know is that Gulf shrimp are distinctly different than farm-raised shrimp, and even wild shrimp from other waters.

Raw Gulf shrimp in the seafood case at Pinchers

Gulf shrimp are pink, and they're naturally sweet. They're more flavorful than other shrimp, even than some langostines (in my opinion), and they're best prepared with little fuss. For me, I like them steamed and chilled, perhaps sprinkled with a little Old Bay Seasoning. Serve them up in their shells (peel 'n' eat is half the fun), and pair with a zesty house-made cocktail sauce. A half pound is plenty for one if you've shared an appetizer or started with a cup of soup. But I always have second thoughts about foregoing the full pound portion when my plate is clean. And the price at Pinchers? Reasonable (for Naples, that is). This trip, I'm eating so. much. shrimp. And actually, I would pair these shrimp with Hot Sun tomato wine.

Urban Hiking

Those of you who've read my San Francisco entries know that I love to sightsee by just walking around. Great exercise (especially with SF hills), and I usually end up covering around 6 miles in just an afternoon. Naples, fortunately, is flat. Also fortunate is that my dad's place is within walking distance of the downtown area. So, here are some of the random things I saw around the city over the course of an afternoon.

Pelican on the roof of Kelly's Fish House. In the background: Tin City.

Mystery novelist Diane Ketcham was signing books at the Chalk Art Fest. After seeing the title of her latest book, I certainly felt less safe staying here.

A big 19-month old Newfoundland puppy wants to play. The Yorkie is skeptical that playing is a good idea.

The Naples Pier. People were fishing for sea trout... and anything else they could catch. Not a great day for fishing, turns out.

The Naples Beach. The whole thing is open to the public, no private sections. That's pretty cool.

A seagull sporting a Flock of Seagulls hairdo. Not from the Eighties? Look it up.

The entrance to the pier is decorated with sea turtle mosaics created by Naples HS art students in 2010. A nearby plaque says they they "embody the connection that the city has with the Gulf of Mexico and our responsibility to the creatures that live in it." 

3D wall art on a random building

Deserted courtyard

Sculpture advertising the Naples Trolley Tours. Yep, that's a gator.

Floridan Flora

I suppose I could have included these photos in my Urban Hiking post, but I guess if you don't care about plants, you can just skip ahead. This one's about plants.

In the upper Midwest, greenhouses are packed with a variety of tropical house plants to make any room of your house green, even in the winter. These plants are exotic and sometimes difficult to care for. So, if you're from there and you come here, I imagine you might be intrigued by the myriad of plants that flower in the winter and surprised to see some of your house plants used outside for landscaping. Also, plants that fit in an 8" pot back home grow to large proportions when stuck in the ground and exposed to lots of sunshine. When I was little, I just assumed I'd see the same plants in Florida that we had in Illinois during the summer. After all, isn't it always like summer here? 

Hibiscus

Bougainvillea

Also bougainvillea. I'm pretty sure.

Colorful shrubs

Maybe some kind of spider wort?

Bromeliad. Like an air plant. They're on everything down here. If you stand in one place too long, one will grow on you!

Most of the palm trees are producing fruit/nuts this time of year. This one was the prettiest.

Berries on anything that wasn't dormant or flowering.

Yep. More berries.

Chalk for Charity

So, confession: This is a blog fail. I had several great photos of different chalk paintings that got lost on the internets, and I don't believe there's a way to retrieve them; furthermore, I cleared them from my camera roll, which was just plain senseless. But I'm glad this one managed to make it through. It captures everything I wanted to illustrate about the Chalk Street Art Festival. 

In a nutshell, 142 artists' canvases allocated on 5th Avenue South, community business-sponsored artists, and a public voting contest benefitting the local Rotary Club. Local musicians every few blocks, and (as mentioned before), street food. Paintings ranged from simple and graphic to as detailed as an original portrait. Some professional artists were even replicating their own works on the ground.

But I loved this one before they had really even started. I saw the template, and it appeared that this simple blue box was about to sprout palm trees and a beach, maybe even a beach umbrella. But I think it would have said volumes if they just called it a day.