Downtown Fort Myers

I thought this trip was a ridiculous waste of time. While they've certainly done a great job trying to make the downtown area more tourist-friendly by copying the Naples format, the trip didn't instill a "sense of place" or really any positive feelings about native Florida. The only part of the trip that I found interesting in a naturalistic sense was the oak tree. It seems like every time I see it there are more steel cables vainly attempting to prevent the tree from self-destructing. The house at the Florida Historical Museum, for example, should be burned down, lest the memories of those terrible times continue through the generations. Seriously, though, the historical museum was awful. Why was there a King Tut exhibit? That made no sense to me.

Again, I want to stress that while I enjoy downtown Fort Myers, it simply had no place in this Colloquium class. I hope that the next time the curriculum is revised they exclude this trip and replace it with something more in line with the focus of the class, perhaps a camping trip or something.