Written by:

David Hosea

Last updated: November 2, 2023

It took Heather and I four days to make the 412-mile trip from Tallahassee to Fort Myers because we bounced around Tampa on our way through.  Not on purpose…

There were two reasons for us to stop in Tampa as we slowly made our way to Key West. 

First, our new Airstream, a 30-foot Classic rear-bedroom model is scheduled for delivery to Airstream of Tampa in mid to late May and as long as we were passing through, we thought we should stop in to meet our sales rep.

Second, Heather’s veteran status opened up FamCamp to us, an RV park at MacDill Air Force Base, and we thought it would be good to hang out there until we were due in Key West.  FamCamp is less expensive than commercial RV parks, way less than the parks in Key West, and saving a few dollars in Tampa while we waited for our Key West itinerary to kick off seemed like the thing to do.

Most of us at FamCamp felt pretty good about the plan.

We arrived at MacDill on a Saturday, after the FamCamp office was closed.  After passing through the main gate, we were checked in by the on-site camp host and asked to register and pay for our visit when the park’s office opened on Monday.  We visited Airstream of Tampa on Sunday and on Monday, went to the FamCamp office as asked. 

I don’t have a military ID and as we were standing up to leave the FamCamp office, we were asked to stop at the Visitor Control Center so I could get a pass.  That is where our FamCamp experience began to unravel.

The Visitor Control Center looked at Heather’s ID, then her DD-214, and had an acute but polite sense of humor failure over the whole affair.  Heather’s ID didn’t validate when scanned, so they confiscated it and asked Heather to contact another office to work it out.  Also, they were certain that FamCamp did not understand their own entry requirements and instead of issuing us a pass to get back onto the base, they offered to have the police escort us back to our campsite so we could prepare for an immediate departure.  

It was an offer we felt compelled to accept.

We left FamCamp and spent two more nights at a commercial campground in Tampa, then decided to wait out the beginning of our Key West trip in Fort Myers.

Heather and I reserved a site at Woodsmoke Camping Resort just off the Tamiami Trail and found the weather typical for that part of Florida.  The high temperatures reached the mid 80s and it was humid, of course.  Strong storms were forecast overnight a couple of days after we arrived and we woke up the next morning to reports of an F-0 tornado that touched down in Fort Myers, but left us with only a few sprinkles and not a lot of wind.

Fort Myers was never home, but it is familiar.  My maternal grandparents retired from Indianapolis to Fort Myers and my mom’s sister and family followed.  So as a kid, we spent some of our vacation time in Fort Myers with grandparents and some of our cousins. 

I remember drives along roads lined with royal palms which apparently, is why Fort Myers is referred to as the City of Palms.  I also remember local attractions like Fort Myers Beach and the Edison Summer Estate and those were two places we wanted to visit at the end of the work week.

We got up on Saturday morning with no sense of urgency and after slowly draining our coffee pot, went to the beach.  It is a popular beach on a Saturday morning.

Parking lots at the center of the beach area were full, but spaces were available as we drove toward the end of the main shopping areas.  The buildings along the way were colored in bright pastels that created a cool, beach vibe. 

We had easy access to the beach from the parking spot we found.  The beach and the gulf opened in front of us as we walked across a wooden foot bridge and through the hedges at the beach’s marked entrance.

The sand was white, very soft, and slowed our walk to a vendor’s kiosk that was set up a couple of hundreds of yards away. 

We rented a couple of the beach chairs and umbrella that the vendor set up in rows close to the water and since the kiosk was just a feet away from a hotel bar’s beach entrance, we stopped in for a couple of beverages before making our way across the beach to our chairs.  We spent a few hours watching the water come in, offshore activities such as parasailing, and a marching band, then headed off to our afternoon boondoggle at the Edison Summer Estate.

The Edison Estate offered guided and self-guided tours and we opted for the self-guided version which worked out well for us.  The self-guided tour seemed safer because it did not add any expense and we were able to take the tour without closely huddling up with other guests in a large group. We also like to do things on our own schedule so the self-guided tour was the way to go.

Marker posts at specific places along the grounds guided our walk and aligned with a narrative on an app that we downloaded prior to our arrival.  As we passed guided tour groups, we heard the guides repeating everything we heard on the app, so it seems as though taking the tour at our own pace didn’t cause us to miss any of the interesting points.

The estate grounds were gorgeous, and it was easy to imagine how nice it must have been to spend the winter living and working there.  There was a pool, pier, gardens, orchards, lab, and a house with a large deck.  One of Edison’s friends, Henry Ford, bought the property next door.

The app guided us through Ford’s estate as well and while it did not seem as remarkable as Edison’s, we found something in his garage that tied back to something we learned while on a bus tour in New Orleans. 

The guide told us that Ford used the Spanish moss from trees in the south to pad his vehicles’ seats and he insisted that the moss get shipped to him in crates made with a specific wood species and in specific dimensions.  He disassembled the crates and had the species and dimensions of wood that he needed for his trucks at no additional expense to him.

Sunday was our last full day in Fort Myers and we decided to take advantage of it by heading toward the beach again.  We learned about the “Taste of the Beach” festival and wanted to check that out.  The festival had everything we expected from a venue named “Taste of the Beach,” but it was much smaller than we expected.  That turned out to be a good thing for us because we found free parking and walked past all of the vendor tents relatively quickly.

Overall, there were about a dozen local restaurants selling food in tents that lined 3 aisles.  We listened to piped-in music from loudspeakers near the front of the venue and smelled sugar as it caramelized at the kettle corn tent.  The food vendors offered tasting sized portions of seafood tacos and nachos and smoked fish dip, each one costing five to six dollars.  There was a shaved ice truck and vendors pushing clothes, hats, and other flea market types of items.  A food truck parked at the end of one of the rows of tents offered chicken tacos, so we had more than just swimming stock to choose from. 

One of the vendors was from Doc Ford’s Rum Bar and Grille and that was a restaurant we targeted early on for a visit.  The line was pretty long at the tent so we didn’t taste anything but went to the restaurant on our way back to the campsite.  The wait time for most of the guests was about 45 minutes, but we were seated in about 10 and we got a window seat by the water.

One of my fond memories of Fort Myers as a kid is the time spent in a beach cabin on stilts at the Pink Shell.  Since my last visit in 1969, Pink Shell grew from stilted cabins on the beach to a high-rise resort. 

While we didn’t make it to Pink Shell this time, we will the next time we get to Fort Myers.  We will go to the beach again and relax while thinking that as some things in Fort Myers change, some things, like the beach, don’t.

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