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.
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.
Have Fun Even When You Work
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.
New Year New Domain
With this new year we have finally migrated out website to it’s own domain name. During the transition process we may have lost a little bit of data here and there and for those who have “subscribed to the blog via email” you may have to do it again. We are hoping that this new hosting service account will help our website load a little faster now. We have so many pictures, links, videos, pages and posts now it was really going slow there for a little while. You will have to reset your bookmarks again as well. For those who added our “FEED” to your favorite reading service you may have to mark it again too. We are sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience during this transition.
Now that we have a book published and have been volunteer “Workamping” in Florida state parks for a while we will be writing more about our experiences during that including what events our current park is hosting, our fellow volunteers, history of the places we are working at, maybe some stories about local residence as well. We are still trying to save up enough money to either fix up our old RV or purchase a new one. The going is slow but we are hopeful and went ahead and books volunteer workamping assignments from now until the end of March 2016. We will either have a “Paying” assignment after that or we will be switching over to volunteering at some of Florida’s National Wildlife Refuges. So far, we have the month of November off this year and hope to have at least 4 new parks reserved for us to stay at and report on. Also, with this new hosting account we hope to finally finish up the pages for the 9 Florida State Parks we visited in April of last year.
First Two Weeks at Stephen Foster
Only Two Weeks Left At Big Shoals
Only two weeks left at Big Shoals State Park and then we move down the road about 6 miles to Stephen Foster Culture Center State Park for the first 4 months of the new year. It has been so peaceful here. Yes, we get a couple of visitors each day and more of the weekend. We have even gotten a couple of visitors who asked questions or just wanted to talk for a few minutes. The work is not difficult and basically only needs doing a couple days a week. All the other times we just are available for the visitors and to close the gates at night. So if you are thinking about volunteering here we hope you will consider it in the future.
The good is definitely the peace and quiet here. The only bad we could say would be the sewer situation. You will have to buy about 80 feet of sewer hose to dump your black water and you can use a regular garden hose to dump your gray water. It would be nice to have a little storage building to use while we are here. But you can use the volunteer washer/dryer at Stephen Foster State Park for FREE. You will have the use of a Gator to run back and forth along the paved trail between Little Shoals and Big Shoals area as well as to explore the various trails while you are here. It has been nice here.
We are looking forward to transferring to Stephen Foster on January 1st. We know that it will be more work, more people and they don’t have sewers on site for the campground hosts either. We may not come back to Big Shoals as we have so many more places to explore. Nor, will we come back to Stephen Foster after we leave there at the end of April for the same reason.
We hope you and yours have a safe and happy holiday season. See you next year!
More Rain Ugg
More Rain…Ugg! It rained a lot before we got here and it is raining more still. We have had a couple of days of freezing weather this past week that, hopefully, killed off most of the mosquitoes. In the past several days, our park ranger, Catherine, just informed us that we have gotten another 4 inches that has soaked into the ground but the forecast for today is for another 2 to 4 inches of the wet stuff. Of course, it will get colder here and the sun will come out just in time for our first Thanksgiving holiday that we will not go home for.
Mom and I have decided just to hang around this quiet, little park, and enjoy the sunshine and cook our turkey breast with a couple of our traditional family side dishes. That means no table filled with desserts that my grandmother has been baking for the last 10 days. This year, most of our family members will be spending Thanksgiving with the in-laws and Christmas at granny’s house. My aunt Sherry, from Denver, will be with my grandmother this Thanksgiving and they plan on a quiet little dinner as well. Of course, we will call everyone to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving and catch on all the latest family gossip.
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