Memories for Miles

It’s winter here in Pennsylvania, and it feels like it’s lasting forever. Many of you are traveling south to soak in the warmer weather, while others may have been dreaming of it.

We have visited many beaches along the Florida coast over the years (both sides), and they all have started to look the same… am I right? Before you get offended and stop reading- I am not knocking on your beloved beaches. They are wonderful and certainly meet all of the sunshiney needs. However, if you’ve been wanting to find something new, something unique, and it also happens to be in Florida– then I have a recommendation for you!

We stumbled across North Captiva Island while searching for an Airbnb for our next Florida trip. We are beach people, and truly feel that if we’re going to make the trek all the way down to Florida– then we have to be on the beach. Well, it turns out that can be quite expensive when you’re searching for a place to stay for at least 7 people (plus a bonus set of adults: aka Grandparents!).

The houses in North Captiva seemed a bit cheaper than many others which peaked my curiosity. Yes, we travel on points- but your girl is not dropping hundreds of thousands of points to cover the payment of an Airbnb for one trip alone.

I began researching- chatting with others, and the planning ensued. About 8 months later, I found myself walking along the coast of the cutest little island off the golf coast of Florida, feeling like we had the entire place to ourselves, and I have to tell you all about it.

Let’s talk about the island itself first. North Captiva Island is a 4-mile-long, 1/2-mile-wide island that is only accessible by ferry. That’s right—no cars. Only golf carts on the island. It has a ton of vacation homes on half of the island, and the other half has a nature preserve with lots of trails and wildlife. There is an airstrip, a boat rental shop, a gift shop, and a small grab-and-go shop where you can get some essentials as well as ice cream and coffee! There are also a few restaurants, but they have varying hours throughout the year, so it’s always best to check into that before counting on visiting one of them.

Ok this sounds really great right? But I’m sure you have lots of questions. I did too! I will try my best to cover them here:

1. How do you get onto the island?
   – We had the best Airbnb host that gave us all of the easiest recommendations! We drove down to Pine Island, Florida and we were able to park our car at the Marina there for the week. We booked our ferry through Island Girl Charters. It wasn’t super cheap, but they took care of all of our luggage very well and we didn’t feel like we had to worry about our bags. They were also super friendly and had plenty of time options available.
2. Ok, you said there was a little shop- how did you get groceries??
   – This was the one that through me the most at first- but it was actually AMAZING and super easy. Our Airbnb host had their own management company of people who lived on the island. They provide a grocery service. All I had to do was grocery plan for the week, fill out their order form, and the food was literally there for us when we arrived at the house. Yes, there is a fee (25% of your grocery bill), but it was SO nice to not have to worry about giving up your first entire morning of vacation to go grocery shopping–which is a chore I do not enjoy to begin with!
   – Run out of something during the week? No problem. They also offered a refill service. We simply filled out the form on a Tuesday morning, and the items were delivered to our house by Wednesday morning.
3. How do you get your luggage from the Marina to your house?
   – This was another cool perk of the management company that our rental house used! They met us at the Marina and loaded our luggage up onto a trailer that was attached to his golf cart. He then gave us a short tour of the island, and brought out luggage to the house for us. Talk about VIP services!
4. How does this whole thing with the golf carts work?
   – Our rental also came with 2 golf carts. Most of the homes come with golf carts that would have enough seats for the amount of people that the house sleeps. We really only used them twice. One evening we ordered take out, so my husband took the golf cart to pick it up, and another evening we all piled on them to grab some ice cream cones.
5. What is there to do on the island?
   – To me, this was the biggest perk. There aren’t a lot of touristy things to do. You have your house, the beach, lots of seashells to hunt, the pool, and nothing but time to make fun memories. There are boat tours you can take, places where you can go fishing, and other excursions you can book through the boat rental office. We chose to skip a lot of that and keep our days simple.
   – We would wake up, have breakfast, go for a long walk on the beach to hunt for seashells, swim in the pool for a bit, head to the beach for the rest of the afternoon, have dinner, watch the sunset, and spend the evening playing games or watching a movie. Simple.

We did visit the Nature Preserve, but we couldn’t walk very far as there was still some hurricane damage (downed trees) being cleaned up. However, we could walk about a mile down the beach from our house, and cut up to the trails, and then take the sandy roads back to the house for a round trip of about 2.5 miles.

If this sounds like an adventure you might want to take your family on and you still have questions- ask away in the comments below! I’d love to help you plan your trip!