Category: Funding Our Adventure

We May Be Stationary but Working On Moving

April 10, 2019 Jolene MacFadden

Right now we may be stationary but I am working as fast and hard as I can to get this current book I am writing finished and, hopefully, selling lots of copies or perhaps get a couple of corporate sponsors to help in publication and marketing. Once, it is finally completed we will be moving our dead RV to my brother’s house for renovations. We will be looking for another RV of some type to continue our travels. My mom still wants to go and I really want to finish visiting ALL of the state parks before we venture out to other states. To that end we hope you will support us by buying our handcrafted items from our various online stores, visiting our websites, clicking on the advertisements (hey, every penny counts), share and love our posts on social media or even join our membership site.

Funding Our Adventure, Our eBook, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Volunteer at National Parks and Forest, Volunteer in Florida State Forests, Workamping, Working While RVing

Next Stop Alligator Lake

September 21, 2016 Jolene MacFadden

Our next stop in our workamping journey will be a little different that what we are use to doing. Alligator Lake Recreation Area is located in Columbia County Florida (Lake City area) and they offer a semi-permanent positions for workampings in both their Falling Creek Falls Park and this one. They have a stable parking pad here with water, electric and sewer on site. There is even a little shed next to it we can use as extra storage which we have gotten use to here at Olustee Beach Day Use Area. The only thing is they do not have a washer/dryer available for us to use nor an extra shower in the shop area which we like very much here. But, the coordinator stated that she would have no objection for us adding one if we like. They do offer FREE internet and Basic Cable and mom is looking forward to that. Finally, they stated that we can stay as long as we would like but would really like us to stay through next summer. It seems that their regular winter workampers are moving over to the Falling Creek Falls Park and we contacted them at the right time.

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Campground Host Experiences, Funding Our Adventure, Workamping, Working While RVing

RVing Authors

April 4, 2016 Jolene MacFadden 1 Comment

RVing Authors is the second part of our blog series this week. We will be giving you a listing of all the writers we have found that are either part-time or full-time RVing and writing and publishing their stories for us to enjoy. Again, we hope you will support these writers by buying their books, sharing them with your friends, family and other travelers. We have them all listed in our OGA Store page under RVing Fiction so if you would go to that page and purchase your items we would greatly appreciate it.

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

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