Sanibel Island 2013 Day 4

On the fourth day of our vacation we decided to try Gulfside beach, which was a beach we'd never gone to before. 

An eagle   (I stand corrected.  This is probably an osprey.  Thanks so much Diane for your good eye)  landed about 50 ft. away and was having a fish breakfast.  I slowly inched towards him, snapping pictures as I went.  I got about 25 ft. away when a pair of beach walkers charged through and scared him off.  Grrr.......  He left in a hurry, and took his breakfast with him....

We spent several hours strolling the beach area, looking for shells, but the only thing of interest that we found was this giant horseshoe crab.

Around lunchtime we took off and headed over to Pinocchio's for some ice cream (dirty sand dollar is my favorite) and then went back to our beach for awhile.  Again, we didn't find any good shells.  For dinner that night we went to The Fish House.  This is a newer restaurant on the island and Chablis declared it her new favorite place to eat.  She had shrimp and scallop alfredo that was delicious.  I had a seafood sampler that I didn't care for at all.  The scallops were just ok, the shrimp was way overcooked and I didn't care for the mahi at all.

After dinner we decided to head back out to Captiva and walk out to Red Fish Pass again.  I think this has become one of our favorite places to end the day.  This stretch of beach is just lovely and the sunset views are gorgeous.

On our brisk walk back to the parking lot after sunset, we saw this adorable little crab sitting on shore.  It was like he came out to say good night to us.