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.
Category: Campground Host Experiences
Its Cold Then Its Hot
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.
Brrrr Its Cold Up In Here
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.
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.
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