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On the Edge of Old Florida

October 06, 2009

A trip to SW Florida's outer islands shows us it really is possible to live without TV and WiFi By Patricia Letakis | Photography Jon Whittle

http://www.floridatravellife.com/article.jsp?ID=1000075704

It's one of those Florida days in early summer when mornings are gloriously hot with crisp blue skies and evenings take a mysterious turn, morphing into a spectacle of thunderbolts. Eager to reach my destination — Tarpon Lodge on Pine Island — before the heavens dump buckets of rain, I leave North Fort Myers behind, whizzing across causeways and bridges and cutting through Matlacha, a fishing-village-turned-artist-colony where brightly colored shacks blur into a rainbow as I speed along. The final leg before arriving on the 17-mile-long Pine Island is a stretch of wetlands where telephone poles serve as canvases for local artists who paint decorative fish, hibiscus and manatees on them. I like this place already.

On Stringfellow Road, Pine Island's main drag, there are no swanky resorts, golf courses or paths leading to sandy beaches. Instead, hundreds of palm trees from fat, frilly foxtails to the cabbage variety, the state's official palm tree, line the thoroughfare. Dirt roads intersect with the asphalt one I'm on; pickups towing boat trailers pass me; and occasional clusters of no-frill homes and vast nurseries make up the scenery.

Snaking off onto Pineland Road, I arrive at the Tarpon Lodge, greeted by still more palm trees — areca, royal and coconut — with no beach or storm in sight. Owner Rob Wells III greets me with a slightly Southern twang: "Welcome to Tarpon Lodge!" My own celeb look-alike (he bears a slight resemblance to Matthew McConaughey ... I think it's the wavy hair combed back), is to be my guide to the outer islands, a cluster in Southwest Florida's Gulf waters that doesn't usually make the must-see lists simply because it's only accessible by boat. (See "How to Island Hop".) But that's what makes this place a fisherman's haven — and Wells tells me the tarpon are biting. After growing up on neighboring Cabbage Key, he should know.

When Wells was 3 years old, his family moved from North Carolina to the Gulf island. "We were touring in the area and my dad saw it as an opportunity, kind of a pioneering thing. I think he was lucky with timing, as the area [namely, Sanibel and Captiva] really started booming," says Wells of the family's purchase of the Cabbage Key Inn back in 1976. He and his brother, Ken, would ply the blue-green waters of Pine Island Sound by boat to get to school. "We had no phone or power, just a generator," he recalls. But the island purchase was only the first half of Wells senior's plan. In 1999, he bought the Tarpon Lodge. "My dad kept driving by this piece of property year after year. He's an avid fisherman and thought it would complement Cabbage Key," Wells elaborates. The family set it up as an old-school fishing lodge, a real throwback to Old Florida, only with an "upscale" spin to appeal to the ladies, kids and diehard fishermen who like to kick back at night with TVs in their rooms and a gourmet meal in the restaurant.

My first sampling of these upscale efforts arrives at dinner with a bowl of the blue crab and roasted corn chowder made with fresh corn that still has its crunch. With a look of pride and amusement, chef Jethro Joseph, who hails from the Cayman Islands, tells me the soup has made the "100 things to eat before you die" lists that pop up in magazines and on the Internet. In between the soup and the local tripletail fish sautéed in olive oil with garlic and olives, a plate of freshly sliced mangos makes its way to our table, courtesy of hotel manager Nancy Glickman's backyard. Her seven very large mango trees, along with her technique for harvesting the fruit, have made her somewhat of a celebrity on Pine Island. "The way to get them to full ripeness afier picking them is not to expose them to cold air," she says. Glickman puts them in a brown bag in a warm room until they are sweet — a timing trick that comes only from experience. Her crop has been turned into mango pesto and mango crème at the restaurant many times over.

As I sip my glass of Whitehaven New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, I notice the view across a lush green lawn, past a white gazebo to the inky waters of Pine Island Sound. The pounding of rain on the tin roof signals the summer storm has picked up momentum. But as we natives know, that can also signal beautiful weather in the morning.