Thousand Trails Peace River (Wauchula)

We got out of Lazydays early yesterday afternoon and headed for TT Wauchula. We used our new Garmin Nuvi 760 GPS to navigate through southeast Tampa which got us to Hwy 62 and eventually Hwy 17. This is our first time at the Peace River Preserve. The GPS came up a little short on the actual location of the preserve.....about 4 miles actually, but I think that may have been my fault too. Not sure if the address I typed in was 100% correct. We were told there is a difference between Hwy 17N and Hwy 17S. Anyway we arrived here around 3:30 pm yesterday and are set up in site G4 until Jan 03, 2008.





(If you click on the above photo, it will enlarge and you should be able to see the gator on the opposite river bank.)

This is an excellent campground and the people here are very friendly. The campground is likely half full or perhaps even slightly less. We have been told that all campgrounds in Florida will get busy in January. Hopefully it won't be too busy. We are hoping to get an extra 4 days here if possible before heading back to the Orlando area. No sooner had we pulled into our site, than our neighbours from Kentucky were over with a beer and introducing themselves.

There certainly seems to be a lot of activities to get involved in here. There are sign up sheets in the store for all kinds of activities: Christmas Potluck Dinner, golf, pizza night, RV seminars, pickleball, bicycling, fossiling, etc. We hope to try pickle ball tomorrow. Basically, it is like tennis but played with a smaller racket and a wiffle ball.....or so I think!

We ran two loops around the preserve this morning. A combination of streets and nature trails that run along Peace River. The run was great and was our first real exercise since leaving Thousand Trails in Orlando. The pool here is not very big, so we are not yet sure if we will even swim here. Lots of areas to walk, run, hike and cycle though.


This afternoon we met several other campers for some fossiling in
the waters of Peace River. One regular, Princess Jane, so named because she is British, stays here all winter and gave us a few pointers on what to look for and how to dig and screen off the silt and sand to see what we had recovered. We were up to our knees in cold water for about two hours, which was great after our run, looking for fossils. We found many teeth, mostly small, but also some old Indian beads, shells, etc. The area of Peace River we were in is only about 2 ft deep in most places and runs quite slowly. There are two alligators that enjoy sunning themselves on the opposite bank during the day. One is about 12 feet long and named Stumpy because he only has 3 legs. The other is only about half that length. They each have their own territory and stay separate from each other, about 1/2 mile apart I should think. We will try to get some pictures tomorrow. Lots of wildlife here too, squirrels, wild pigs, turkey vultures and more.


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Stay safe everyone.