The Calusa Blueway trail currently stretches about 100 miles, meandering through Estero Bay - tucked roughly behind the barrier islands of Lovers Key and Fort Myers Beach - and snaking northward into Pine Island Sound, Charlotte Harbor, and the sable-palmed, white-sand islands of Sanibel, Captiva, and Cayo Costa. Soon the trail will officially continue up the Caloosahatchee River and its tributaries, too, though frankly there's nothing to stop you from paddling there now. There is ample opportunity to ply waters fraught with great blue herons and mischievous manatees. But the Blueway also leads to places where you can immerse yourself in the simple joys that make life worthwhile, like desolate beach hikes, the sand soft beneath your feet; cold beverages served up at dockside juke joints; and watching sunsets from a veranda, with rustling palms applauding the purpling demise of day.

Better still, Florida's Gulf Coast moves with a soft, egalitarian sibilance. In Miami, you are judged by who you are and what you wear. On Matlacha, a thin sliver of water's-edge restaurants and shops along the causeway that enters Pine Island, you can walk into Moretti's Waterfront Seafood Restaurant wearing a kayaking skirt and neoprene aqua socks and receive the same attentive service and mouthwatering grouper as Paris Hilton would.

"We're still a little undiscovered," says one Pine Island resident, "and a lot of good things come with that."

VINCE DROPS OFF the four of us - Debby, me, and Rick and Janet (husband and wife kayakers from St. Petersburg, Florida) - at the dock at Cayo Costa State Park, which is 2,416 acres of hardwood hammock and lovely beach abutting the Gulf of Mexico. We slide our kayaks into the water. Within minutes, we are tracking a pair of manatees, watching the water's mirrorlike surface for telltale ripples.