When it gets too cold for the James, try the Peace paddle

By LEE BARNES

Why, pray tell, would you drive all the way to Florida to go canoeing, instead of merely tossing a boat into the James River?
Well, there’s the year-round great weather. And the chance to see alligators. And the night visits from curious wild boar.
My daughter Jen and I recently did a canoe trip on the Peace River, about an hour’s drive from Tampa/St. Petersburg. A company called Canoe Outpost handles the arrangements, offering day trips and overnight ones. We chose an overnight trip.
For $75, Canoe Outpost provides the two-person canoe and life preservers. We paid a little extra to get seatbacks for our canoe, which I certainly recommend. For the overnight camping, you have to provide all of your own stuff. We packed a couple of tents, a gallon of drinking water, sleeping bags, a few odds and ends, and a cooler filled with ice and food. We also had a cooking stove, but forgot and left it in the car.
Here’s how it works: The company drops you at the departure site, you paddle for a day, camp out that night, and continue to paddle the next day, until you arrive back where you started. Simple as that.
The life jackets aren’t really necessary, because the water isn’t deep, and it’s so calm, there’s no chance of falling out of the boat. Despite that, within the first two hours of our trip, I managed to turn the canoe on its side anyway, by paddling us up against a small stump that turned out to be a big stump below the surface.
Jen and I were both dumped in the water, but she had the presence of mind to right the canoe immediately. We were soaked, but almost everything else, including my camera, was dry. The only casualty was my little iPod Shuffle in my pocket. It’s now DOA.
The Peace River certainly earns its name, with hardly any current as you paddle. It’s quiet and, for the most part, untouched by human hands. We saw little evidence of civilization, other than three motorboats over the course of two days, and some bits of trash occasionally.
Wildlife is all around you, but sometimes you have to look for it. We saw countless Ibis, with their trademark bent beaks and their odd squawks as they take off. Lots of Herons and Cormorants. We rounded one bend to find the largest assembly of Turkey Buzzards I have ever seen, numbering in the hundreds. I told my daughter that the birds were gathered to watch a particular news commentator; I won’t offend your political sensibilities by saying which one.
We saw four alligators up close; all four decided to disappear into the water rather than say hello.
At about 5 p.m. on day one, we began looking for a suitable place to spend the night. There are no camp sites. You find a reasonably flat place to put up your tent, away from any standing water where mosquitoes might breed. We found a nice grassy area and called it a day.
During the night, we were visited by a boar, or maybe two boars. Since our cooler was tightly sealed and we had left no garbage bags about, the boars weren’t really looking for anything specific – we were merely in their territory. They were easily frightened away by the sound of our voices and our flashlight beams. Big guys they were, too – you could hear their hoof beats in the grass for some distance as they ran away.
On closer inspection the next day, I found a nearby area about the size of a house where a boar had been rooting for grubs and such. The destruction was amazing – it was as if someone had brought in a small bulldozer.
Further close inspection showed that we had been camping in a field full of spiders of all sizes, some with bodies about the size of an AAA flashlight battery. All of the spiders were harmless, but I would have felt better about not discovering this discovery. Ignorance is bliss.
I don’t know beans about paddling a canoe, but it’s not difficult, and on the Peace River, it’s easy, even if you’re out of shape. The canoe company expects you to finish the trip between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on the second day; we finished by 10:30 a.m. My daughter is small and not a powerful paddler, but she never tires, and that accounts for our rapid pace.
We made our trip in late September, when the weather was still bordering on Florida Hot. I suspect the canoe trip will only improve over the winter months, as the weather cools off, but never (almost never) gets genuinely cold.
I suspect that most folks opt for the day trips, but I recommend the overnight trip for the camping experience. Just don’t go looking too closely at what you’re camping on.

Archives: October 09