Shore birds bathe and fish for minnows in an expansive field just off the bridge to Fort Myers Beach. So much of this is a rare sight: Undeveloped land in coastal Lee County with shore birds this far from the sandy beach.
This used to be an old RV park, but Hurricane Ian chased everyone away two years ago.
There are a few mangled trailers still left behind, but for the most part, it's a green field, now flooded in spots from last Wednesday's hurricane. The birds are loving it. But in time, development will come.
Down the road, the line to get on the bridge and over to Fort Myers and Bonita beaches on Thursday was long. Residents and visitors were chased away from these coastal towns earlier in the week when mandatory evacuation orders were issued; Hurricane Milton was on its way, the fifth storm to impact the barrier islands over two years.
The sound of cars and trucks idling is blunted by the piercing police and fire sirens. The emergency workers skirt the long lines and race over the bridge the wrong way.
Motorists in line brace for what they might see once they cross the bridge. Will it look like the town imploded, like it did after Hurricane Ian? Or will remaining buildings still be standing?
Turns out, it was battered, but it’s still standing.
Mountains of sand on the roadway make it difficult for vehicles to drive in each direction at the same time. The southern entrance to Estero Island was completely blocked by sand and debris Thursday.
Construction debris litters many yards, and not just the yards where homes are being built after Hurricane Ian.
Such debris was carried in the storm surge to Diane Rogge's Fort Myers Beach house.
"The workers really need to do a better job securing all this construction material before a storm comes," she said.
Rogge and her boyfriend, Richard Emmons, are busy cleaning up the outside of a cheery little lime green house -- one of the last vestiges of old Florida. It was built in 1941 by a fortuitous sheriff who raised it, nearly, off the ground.
Over the years, the little home has been hardened to try and withstand major storms. So far it has.
"This house made it through Ian, and it's made it through Hurricanes since 1941 and it just seems to still be here," Rogge said.
Rogge bought the house in 2015. She had just returned home after evacuating.
There's muck everywhere. Just like there was three weeks ago when Hurricane Helene marched up the coast and across the state.
These back-to-back storms – again, the fifth in two years -- are unnerving for Rogge and many others.
"You know, I'm asking myself, and my daughter's calling me, and she's like, 'Mom, after this, you need to sell, you need to move.' And a lot of the neighbors are saying that as well. I mean, this house is 11.9 [feet] above sea level, which is about few inches from code, I believe, is 12 [feet] and for me to raise it 2 feet would be very expensive," she says.
A large old frangipani tree has toppled over. Rogge's prized garden is a muck-filled mess after the ocean rolled over the island with at least two feet of storm surge where Rogge lives.
"People are getting tired of the de-mucking, picking up the stuff, sitting it out for the trash. It's hard not knowing, not knowing what's going to happen," she said.
Rogge’s boyfriend owned the little home for 22 years before selling it to his girlfriend. He knows with climate change, the house should probably be raised. He knows it could eventually be swept away.
"I mean, it could probably go up a couple more feet, you know. But new siding, impact windows and everything like that inside you wouldn't probably hear the storm that happened the other night but the fear is the water is going to be high enough to take you into the Back Bay," he said.
When I ask how he copes with all this fear he jokingly says therapy and encourages those who are scared to get off the island, take care of themselves first, and then come back.
"But that doesn't mean it won't be the next time, you know? So ... we'll do this. We'll de-muck for a week or so, and then hopefully not get anything else for the rest of the year. And then reevaluate," he said.
He, too, says he knows a lot of people are thinking about leaving the island.
"I think it's unfortunate, because it's like you live here for a reason, and then if you, and if you can put up with those things, and then you can have a nice quality of life," he said. "Who doesn't want to be at the beach?"
Emmons talks about the Mucky Duck restaurant several miles up the coast on Captiva Island. Milton hammered it pretty hard.
"The front of their building is all collapsed, and there was all filled with sand and everything. So we'll see, we'll see how long it takes us to get all that back together. I hope people have either the courage or the stomach to be able to go through to rebuild it so that we can enjoy it again, even if it might get destroyed again. "
Further down Estero Island it's much of the same: Mountains of sand, muck, debris and post-hurricane weariness.
But here the roads were closed to motorists. So residents hoofed in on foot pulling generators and carting armfuls of supplies to their homes.
Ron Selke, a Floridian for the past 17 years who moved from Indiana, said the anxiety of all the storms makes him want to drink, something he no longer does.
"Just watching the water come across the road, the anxiety just goes sky high," he said.
He says he thought about packing it all up and leaving coastal Florida after Hurricane Ian. But doing so, he could mean replacing all the sand with snow.
"I said [I'd leave] ... after Ian, but was still here. I mean, it's paradise, but you have to understand that, you know, Mother Nature has its own mind."
Multimedia journalist Amanda Inscore Whittamore contributed to this report.