Category: Lessons in Camping

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

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

Next Three State Parks

April 18, 2014 Jolene MacFadden

The next three state parks on our list is Alafia River State Park, Hillsborough River State Park and Lake Louisa State Park.

Information for Campers:

Alafia River State Park is located just off County Road 39 in Lithia, Florida. They have a relatively small campground with about 20 spaces designated for Family Camping and 11 for Equestrian Camping. All the sites are fairly large with about half being pull-throughs and the other back-ins. They are nicely spaced but there is not much privacy. You have a grassy area around the asphalt driveways, electric and water only. There is only one bathhouse with one shower on each side (males/females). Of course, this shower doubles as ADA compliant and the hot water comes from Solar Panels on the roof. There is a wide expanse of grassy area with picnic pavilions, tables, and benches all facing a nice little lake.

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

Large Parks versus Small Parks

February 19, 2014 Jolene MacFadden

When you think about your camping experiences in Florida State Parks do you recall what you liked about the park?

Was it a smaller, out-of-the-way State Park or was it just outside of a large town and a fairly large State Park?

Do you prefer to stay at a place with lots of activities or do you just want to lay back and enjoy the quiet?

These questions and more you really should ask yourself before you make reservations at any State or National Park. (Please always make reservations as far in advance as you can). The reason being is you will want to get the most bang for your hard-earned, or even retired, bucks. If you haven’t visited your intended park before go online and read the material on their website, check out some videos about the park on YouTube and ask friends, relatives and your Facebook buddies what they thought about the park if they visited it in the before. You want to look at pictures and videos and go online to see what people have said about the park recently. Remember things could have changed if the information is more than a couple of years old. And please make note of some of the rules about camping in your intended parks as well. They are there for the comfort, safety and enjoyment of all the visitors not just to pick on you.

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

What Else Can Go Wrong

September 1, 2013September 15, 2025 Jolene MacFadden

Have you ever had one of those days where absolutely everything goes wrong? I mean you try to prepare for some things but when mother nature and the cosmos conspire against you what can you do? We thought we were going to have a smooth transition from TH Stone Memorial St Josephs Peninsula State Park to Dade Battlefield Historic State Park. We planned on leaving on the last day of the month, travel about halfway down and spend the night somewhere before continuing on and beginning on new assignment on September 1st. Our last volunteer coordinator even allowed us to have the last two days off so that we could do any last-minute cleaning and get ready to travel. That is when we started having problems.

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Florida State Parks, Funding Our Adventure, Lessons in Camping, Workamping