South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
All aboard
Experience the magic of Christmas aboard The Polar Express, which takes riders to the North Pole from Brightline’s Fort Lauderdale station.
Peace River winds 106 miles through Central Florida, from Polk County to the Gulf of Mexico, but its significance to longtime Florida families makes it feel more like the Mississippi.
Most of the native Floridians I know have been to the Peace River. When I moved here decades ago, I was told of the river’s charm and its treasure of fossilized shark teeth waiting to be discovered beneath the waters.
Despite my best intentions, it took me almost 20 years to visit, and I learned I have been missing out.
My family traveled on the Peace River with friends who have been in Florida for generations. We got on the river upstream of Arcadia, where a popular outfitter, Canoe Outpost, is based.
Peace River can be enjoyed in a one-day paddle or over several days while camping along its banks.
On a recent three-day, two-night adventure, we saw plenty of alligators, turtles, birds, fish and dragonflies along the river. Deer, raccoons and other wildlife trotted in and around the campsite.
We even found the tracks of snakes and deer along a beach where we stopped for lunch one day.
The river is not only a visual wonderland, but also an audio wonderland, with a soundtrack of bird calls and cows mooing in the morning and insect songs at night.
The adventure begins
Our paddle trip with Canoe Outpost began, as many do, at the ending. Paddlers park their cars at the outfitter’s base, then take buses to their put-in point of choice. Those buses drop them miles upriver with canoes, paddles, life jackets and other gear so they can paddle with the current back to their cars or their campsites.
Paddlers on overnight trips can camp on public land along the river if they bring all their own gear in their canoes. Or families can choose to camp on Canoe Outpost sites and have their gear delivered in a trailer directly to the campsite.
The second option allows families to bring a lot more to the campsite, including oversize coolers, cots, large tents and other gear. Groups can also get deliveries of ice to Canoe Outpost campgrounds, ensuring food and drinks stay cold, and even get meals delivered from outside caterers, for a fee.
Because our group was camping with Canoe Outfitters at their Oak Hill site, we loaded our gear on the trailer once we arrived in Arcadia, grabbed life jackets for the kids and boarded the bus for Gardener.
On the river
Pushing the canoe away from the river bank felt like an escape. The kids and I had minimal gear in the canoe: just a cooler with lunch and drinks, a bag with sunscreen and hats, water guns to squirt the other families in our party, and a camera.
All of the other canoes also had fishing gear, but I didn’t have a fishing license or any desire to deal with a fishing pole. Instead, I took photos to document the catfish, snook and brim that the others caught and released.
We paddled almost 8 miles the first day, but there was no rush. We fished, played, squirted and splashed our way down the river, stopping for lunch and water breaks, and arrived with hours of time to set up camp and explore the Oak Hill camping area before darkness fell.
Campsites are marked with signposts, but if you’re not looking for them, they are hard to miss. There is one portable potty for every three to four campsites, but no running water or electricity, which made for a blessedly quiet and electronics-free weekend.
No glass is allowed on the river, and everything that comes in must go out, so we brought firewood in a lidded, plastic trash can that we were able to use to keep the animals out of our trash. We bagged plastics separately for recycling, and everyone did their part to make sure all our waste made it into one bag or the
other.
Keeping camp safe
Locking coolers and food bins are best, since raccoons made good efforts to get into unsecured supplies, making off with one family’s bread bag the first night. Ants and other insects also discover untended food quickly.
The bane of outdoor existence in Florida — mosquitoes — were blessedly few during our trip and only bothered us during sunset before disappearing for the rest of the evening.
That left us free to enjoy the coolness and dark of the evening around a blazing campfire, where we roasted hot dogs, marshmallows and Starburst candies under the abundant stars. Others in the group fired up their propane grills for steaks, tacos, beef and beans, bratwurst and other meals during the weekend.
Glow sticks, glow balls and flashlights provided plenty of entertainment after dark for the kids, and card games and paddleball kept them busy during the day when they weren’t in the river.
But the river — even when you aren’t paddling — takes center stage. My kids and I spent most of our free day in the river near our camp, learning to jump from a high spot on the bank into the river below, playing in the sand, and floating on rafts while waving to passing canoes and calling, “Fish out of water!” to see if we could get them to jump out of their canoes.
Athough the Oak Hill campground can fill up, each site has its own beach, so it doesn’t feel crowded even when you have neighbors. On our recent trip in October, only one other campground within walking distance had campers, so Oak Hill felt like our own private playground.
Heading home
Our final day started with breaking camp down and packing — a process that can take hours. But the final stretch of paddling to Arcadia is only half the distance — 4 miles — of the first day, so we used the extra time on the river to hunt for fossils, digging in the sand in the middle of the river for shark teeth.
We brought our own sand sifter and shovel, but Canoe Outpost has sifters and shovels that paddlers can borrow or buy before setting off. Lower water levels on Peace River yield better results, so plan your visit accordingly if shark teeth is your main objective.
Once you arrive at base, a helpful staff takes care of the canoe and your rental gear, so the end of the trip is easy: Just gather your gear, step out onto the dock, and walk up the stairs to your car.
The trailer from the campsite is hauled back and parked in the lot, which makes offloading to your car easy and quick. The base also has showers and changing rooms for customers coming off the river, so we were able to clean up and get a T-shirt before heading home.
The best souvenir of the trip didn’t come from the shop, though. Those small, black shark teeth we took home — along with dozens of photographs and remarkably few bug bites — count for memories of Florida’s treasures that I hope we can share with other new paddlers some day.