BEST NATURE ESCAPE
On the northernmost tip of Pine Island, past fruit nurseries and shrimp stands, a modest, wood-slatted building overlooks Jug Creek. Red and green kayaks stand at the ready. Next door, the team at a local fish house and marina shuffles the radio station between oldies and the latest hits.
Up ahead, Carmen’s Kayaks co-owner Lisa Perry waves down from her perch on the entryway. Lisa and her husband, Joe, have run their kayak rental operation on Bokeelia since 2022, when they took over after the original owner’s retirement. “Let’s get you on the water,” she says. Within 10 minutes, I’m climbing into a red, sit-on-top kayak, floating on the glassy, zero-wake water.
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Photography by Brian Tietz
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Photography by Brian Tietz
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Carmen’s Kayaks owners Joe and Lisa Perry run their rental and tour business on Jug Creek, where Calusa Island and Charlotte Harbor offer up-close encounters with dolphins, birds and wild coastline.
This remote corner of our coast might have remained a mystery to the rest of the Gulfshore Life team, if not for an unlikely tip from creative director Scott Glick. The quietly discerning voice behind the publication’s special brand of stylized Gulfside polish, Scott is the one most likely to veto something for feeling too quaint, too kitschy, too off-brand. In his monochrome layers, always perfectly pressed, he carries the refined posture of someone who cut his teeth in Chicago and Miami’s luxury ad scenes—seemingly more at home with sleek lines and controlled light than salt spray and sun-faded signage. Which is why Bokeelia caught us off guard.
But there, in the shallows, where red mangroves fringe the banks and anhingas dive after flickers of silver, something about the place mirrors Scott’s creative instinct. The setting could have been pulled straight from one of his moodboards: stripped back, deeply textured, evocative in its stillness. “It’s about finding the one unique, special thing about something we cover,” he says. “Rather than just the 30,000-foot-above experience, it’s being able to carve out a few unique moments you can’t replicate in other places.”
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Photography by Brian Tietz
bokeelia florida kayaking aerial view sunset carmens kayaks
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Photography by Brian Tietz
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Scott grew up boating with his family in Miami, but the East Coast, he says, always felt overdeveloped. Here, a kayak gets him closer to the wild. He’s explored much of the Gulf Coast—to him, Bokeelia and Calusa Island offer the most immersive experience. “When you’re going around the island, you feel like you’ve left civilization,” he says. Out there, the salty breeze picks up as docks and waterfront homes disappear. Thin ribbons of white sand appear along the shoreline. Scott likes to beach his kayak and rest a moment, the crushed shells crackling underfoot.
After a quick respite among the mangroves, he’ll return to the water. Along Jug Creek, the water opens into Charlotte Harbor, the still wake giving way to a horizon framed by sailboats and motorboats. Scott sometimes sees photographers poised in nearby pedal boats, capturing the abundant marine life. Dolphins love to hunt for fish here, and puffs of air bubbling may give way to cresting dorsal fins as a pair of dolphins pass by. They swim at a leisurely pace that matches the paddle’s strokes: up and down, a rhythmic routine that calms. “Being in media, [I work] with all kinds of hard deadlines. Being able to contrast that with no deadlines, no agenda, just an open, blue sky in nature relieves that pressure,” he says.
Back at the launch site, Lisa and Joe’s hospitality feels more like friendship than business. “They invite you to come back when you’re not kayaking to hang out,” Scott says. “It’s a bit of a community destination.” Uno, a dolphin with one pectoral fin, rescued from a crab trap by local fishermen, might make an appearance. He often returns in the evenings, happy to put on a show. Scott says it’s intimate experiences like these, where nature and people are in pure harmony, that capture Southwest Florida’s spirit. “It puts the priorities of the world in order. We’re here visiting, but this is the way nature was intended to be,” he says.
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