Author: Jolene MacFadden

Semi-Retired former Full-Time RVer, published author, handcrafted bead and wire jewelry maker, who has started another side businesses helping self-publishing authors publish the books and marketing as well.

Summer on the Suwannee

June 4, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

Summer on the Suwannee River is going to be exciting and it will be hot and muggy too. It’s a very good thing that we will be in a Florida State Park that has a cool spring for swimming. As we speak our little RV air conditioning unit is thinking about quitting on us and we just don’t have the money to get it fixed. 🙁 Major bummer for us. We may have to move to the front of the park behind the ranger’s station to get under the shade of some trees pretty soon. The barn area campsite for the residential hosts is extremely nice with a huge yard, electric, water and sewer set up, a fire ring and picnic table. We also have an extra bathhouse inside the barn that we use. It was made for the boy scouts who primitive camp in the park in exchange for some service project they do for the ranger. They were trying to get equestrian primitive camping approved to utilize this great horse barn that came with the property as well. But due to some “right of way on private property” snafu that has been put on hold indefinitely. The bathhouse is A.D.A. accessible. However, there are no shade trees where we have to park in order to reach the utilities. It gets pretty warm in here fairly quickly in the morning then all the way until dark.

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Campground Host Experiences, Lessons in Camping, RV and Campers, Sights to See, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping

Welcome to Troy Springs

May 6, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

The springs when the river is down — The springs when the river was down

We made it to Troy Springs State Park just fine. We have worked a couple of hours opening and closing the front gate and cleaning the bathrooms once. Then we are off the the next several days. It’s pretty quiet around here as the river is still pretty high and our park ranger, Tina, cannot open the springs up to swimming and diving until the water recedes enough. 🙁 That is both good and bad. Good because we don’t have many visitors so we don’t have to do much in the way of cleaning and bad because we are not getting many visitors to the park so the park is not making much money. We are catching up on some cleaning, posting to our social media pages and writing articles. Hopefully, I will have enough time to add some of our craft items that we have made over the last several weeks on to our online store pages.

This park has two residential park host sites. One is located directly behind the ranger’s office next to the springs area and the other is located on the back of the property in front of the barn. When the park ranger told us we could use the camp site next to the barn I was picturing one of those big red buildings with hay, farm equipment and stuff. Well, it turns out this property had a large horse barn on it when it was purchased by the state. It is in great shape and the park personnel and volunteers have kept it really nice. Sadly, the park cannot allow horses in the park. Which is a great shame as it would bring in more money for this park. They have to get some kind of property easement agreement from one of the local private land owners that are between this park and the Ruth Springs Suwannee River Water Management land area.

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Campground Host Experiences, Funding Our Adventure, Sights to See, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping

Winding Down Here at Stephen Foster

April 19, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

We are winding down here at Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. The campground is looking better as we, and our fellow volunteers, slowly rake, sweep, clip and blow the leaves and trim the bushes in and around the campground area. We finally found a hand blower that I can start myself and I try to use it every day on the campsites. In the mean time another volunteer couple, Linda and J.T., are trimming the trees, bushes and along the roadways. They pay to stay on their campsite and work all day most of the week to whip the campground back into shape after a long fall and winter season. Our co-campground host couple, Dennis and Liz, are doing a great job as well as we learn to use the “automated” cleaning solutions station that was put into the storage areas of the bathhouses. This is suppose to help deliver the “right amounts” of cleaning solution with water ratios for proper cleaning and to help the park save money in the long run. We are still having to use a watered down bleach solution on the shower areas though as it stays so damp in the bathhouses between the rain and humidity. But, we do our best with what we are given and we are still receiving compliments from our fellow campers about how clean the bathhouses are and how nice the campsites are being kept.

Campground Host Experiences, Funding Our Adventure, Our eBook, Park Info, RV and Campers, Sights to See, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping

Its Cold Then Its Hot

March 6, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

March is such a strange month in Florida. Yes, I know our poor neighbors to the north and out west are almost frozen in and we really are not complaining but, man!, will mother nature please make up her mind. First we’re cold and then it warms up and then it rains and gets cold again. Then we start all over. These past three days were so nice, breezy, temps in the high 70s and a day or two in the low 80s but then the rain came and now it is back to being cloudy and gloomy all day long. Of course, right now it’s sprinkling again and supposed to go down to the 30s. Again, I know the rest of the country is frozen over. Hey! We’re in freaking Florida for goodness sake. Anyway, our little space heater fell in the water yesterday when we went to dump our waste tanks. Why, you ask, was the heater in the shower where the water overflows when the gray water tanks are full? Well, there wasn’t anywhere else to keep it out of the way and I really thought we would get the tanks dumped before it overflowed again.

Mom has put a moratorium on all new Volunteer Workamping assignments in the future. NO MORE SITES WITHOUT SEWERS! Even though we really love being here at Stephen Foster Folk Cultural Center State Park. The sites are all nice and big, under large oak and pine trees. The shower rooms always have lots of nice hot water. We even like being campground hosts here. We do work more during our three or four days on than we have at just about any other assignment. We do have to fight each morning to get a working golf cart to clean all the fire pits, barbecue grills and rake the sites on those who have left and before they let others in. Granted, the bathhouses are pretty large and we have to clean both of them every day we are on. It would really make it more convenient for us to have a sewer on-site.

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Campground Host Experiences, Lessons in Camping, RV and Campers, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping

Brrrr Its Cold Up In Here

February 20, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

Brrr…It’s Cold Up In Here. We have been here at Stephen Foster for almost two months now. Yes, we are in the middle of winter here in North Florida but we were hoping to escape some of the worst of the cold weather this year. I know we haven’t had it as bad as they have up north. Each new camper that comes in during the week is usually from those poor states that have been hit the hardest this year. But really dropping down to the 20’s for over 8 hours is just a little bit too much for these old bones. We have had icicles on our RV three or four times already from the condensation of the fridge and last night our water line froze so we didn’t have any water until the sun came out for a couple of hours. Granted, the air is fresh and the temps are slowly rising so that is a plus. For those who haven’t visited the Northern part of Florida during the winter time we generally only have a couple days throughout the winter season of really cold days. For the most part it is cloudy and warm then it rains. After the rain it’s sunny and cold for a couple of days and then we start all over again. Yesterday you would have had to go all the way down the the keys to keep in the 50’s and 60’s.

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Campground Host Experiences, Lessons in Camping, Park Info, RV and Campers, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping

Have Fun Even When You Work

February 2, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

Have fun even when you are working! We are in the middle of a 7 day stretch working in the campground here at Stephen Foster Cultural Center State Park. We wanted to switch over to having weekends off with our co-campground hosts this month to see if we could earn a little extra money working at the Farmers Market in Live Oak on Saturdays and possibly being vendors at some of the upcoming festivals. Thus, we had to work our January schedule and our new February one as well. We just hope they took advantage of their extra days off and had some fun. We are “volunteering” here at the park and work almost the entire day when we are scheduled and have been working on our side business on our days off. For instance, I just spent the last three weeks switching over most of my websites to a new hosting account with newer and hopefully faster servers. I had to do all the work myself because I could afford the $1200 the hosting company wanted in order for them to move everything. Between that and keeping the bathhouses cleaned and stocked and making the campsites ready for arriving campers everyday I am ready to have a little fun.

Funding Our Adventure, RV and Campers, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping