Category: Lessons in Camping

One Month Down and One to Go

July 31, 2013September 15, 2025 Jolene MacFadden

We have been here at TH Stone Memorial St. Josephs Peninsula State Park as campground hosts for 1 month. It has been rainy, hot, stormy as well as nice breezes off of the Gulf of Mexico. The work is sometime hard but mostly due to the heat. We get up early in the morning before the sun rises to clean two bath houses. This can take us sometimes 2 to 3 hours to do depending on how bad they are and how many interruptions we get. We have been assigned to the Gulf Breezes campground area. Originally, we were assigned to the Shady Pines campground which is on the St. Joe Bay side of the peninsula underneath pine trees and in between the palmetto bushes. Due to the shortage of campground host volunteers during this time of year we were reassigned to the Gulf Breezes side and are responsible for the entire campground 5 days a week. The Volunteer Coordinator is Ron and he seems nice but the manager of the park, Mark, does have some unrealistic goals for the campground hosts.

Campground Host Experiences, Florida State Parks, Lessons in Camping, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping

Adams Tract River Camp

May 10, 2013September 14, 2025 Jolene MacFadden

Now that we are halfway through our first assignment we thought we would create a little movie to show everybody where we are a campground host till the end of June. Yes, we have posted some pictures already but a movie is always a nice thing to share with everyone. We have been having a good time. The work so far hasn’t been so hard. We haven’t really had too many campers till this weekend. With the bad weather, school still being in and the river being fairly high until this week means we haven’t had to do much yet. This weekend is the first time we have a full house. Three boy scout troops from our hometown is staying here this weekend. That is two dozen boys and a couple of scout masters will cause quite a bit of work for us. We have already mowed about 3 acres of grass, blown off all the sidewalks, camping platforms and down the boardwalk. We also refreshed the bathroom and set up a recycle station to collect aluminum cans. The all drove in about 8:00pm this evening dropping off their camping equipment and supplies for the weekend. Tomorrow should be interesting.

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

Manatees and Other News

March 12, 2013September 14, 2025 Jolene MacFadden

Since our February Park Fees Campaign didn’t do so well we have decided to take more Camp Host positions for the rest of the year. We have had to postpone our southern leg of our Florida State Parks visits until next year. For now we have been granted a Camp host position at one of the river camps located along the Suwannee River Wilderness Trail for three months. We are looking forward to this new experience though with a little bit of trepidation as they had to close 3 of the 6 camps due to the rising water of the Suwannee this past week. But after a quick call to volunteer headquarters today we were told that they hope to have them all opened by this Sunday. That’s good because a lot of the schools will be getting the spring breaks soon. There is nothing like a kayak or canoe adventure to get away from it all that stress for a week or so. We expect to see quite a few people over the Easter Weekend. Phooey, we are starting our assignment on a holiday. :< Come to think of it our camp host assignment at St. Joseph's starts July 1st just before the holiday as well.

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Florida State Parks, Funding Our Adventure, Lessons in Camping, Volunteer At A Florida State Park

Have An Emergency Fund

December 9, 2012September 14, 2025 Jolene MacFadden

While traveling it is always a good idea to have an emergency fund of some kind in either cash and/or credit cards. You never know what is going to happen when you travel. Case in point. We have been at Faver Dykes State Park just south of St. Augustine, Florida. Again, because we promised the family we would be close during the holidays. Which in this case was probably a good thing. We were able to stay at Goldhead State Park for about a month (they were not that busy and they gave us permission) but we had to move to the next park on the list near Jacksonville. Our RV is too long for us to spend any time at Little Talbot Island State Park camping area and the other RV spots were too expensive.

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Florida State Parks, Funding Your Great Adventure, Lessons in Camping, RV and Campers

Second Lesson in Camping

October 25, 2012September 14, 2025 Jolene MacFadden

We have been going round the Northwest part of Florida and have visited 6 different state parks so far. We will be heading for the next one on November 1st. In all this time we have only been able to fishing two times, didn’t catch anything, and have yet to start a fire or tried to cook anything outside. We have walked along some trails, taken lots of pictures, visited a few places outside the parks such as the National Naval Aviation Museum yesterday.

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Lessons in Camping

Our First Lesson in Camping

October 4, 2012September 14, 2025 Jolene MacFadden

We have still not gotten to go fishing yet. There is just so much to get done before you can pursue a Full-time RV camping adventure that we are just now getting to the point where we can relax and enjoy ourselves. We are learning while doing stuff for our RV including how to hook-up the water and electricity and what we have to do for the waste system. This is not a pleasant subject to talk about but it is a necessary one. Being in an RV with three women there is a lot of washing and bathroom going. We try to use the camp’s facilities as much as possible because those little tanks underneath the RV do not hold a lot of water. You would be surprised at how quickly they fill up. We didn’t have to worry about that at Suwannee River State Park because they have a sewer hookup at each of the sites but when we got to Three Rivers State Park we learned that these little tanks have to be emptied at least every 3rd morning.

Florida State Parks, Lessons in Camping