Our final month at Woods Ferry River Camp has been an eventful one. We have had over 400 visitors this month. Most stayed over and camped for a night or two and we even had some family members drop in on us to visit and take advantage of our lovely camping area. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and regular canoeing and kayaking people abound during the summer months along the Suwannee River. We will be moving to Adams Tract River Camp tomorrow to finish out our summer months with the Suwannee River Wilderness Trail. It will be opened in time for the big 4th of July weekend!
As you know, we were campground hosts at Adams Tract River Camp last year and were scheduled to return this year but with all the flooding along the Suwannee River we couldn’t get into the Adams Tract area as the road leading in was flooded out until this past weekend. The park rangers with Suwannee River Wilderness Trail and Lafayette Blue Springs State Park have been cleaning up Adams Tract for us this week and we really appreciate their efforts. Once, we have packed up here in the morning we will be off to Mayo, Florida once again. All of the River Camps are extremely nice and now have campground hosts to help out the park rangers and greet new river campers.
And even better news is that it is the beginning of the fiscal year for all the Florida State Parks so they can get new much needed supplies and equipment. June is a pretty lean month for most of the state parks as they don’t get to keep the money they collect from park admissions and events. These monies are sent to the main office in Tallahassee and distributed back to the parks in approved budget amounts. This is both good and bad in that the parks that make the least money throughout the year will still get the monies allocated to them to keep going. On the other hand, those state parks that make the most money also only get those funds in their approved budget. They all rely heavily on volunteers to help fill in some of the manpower gaps and the Friends of Florida State Parks groups that raise money for specific needs within their own parks.
Finally, we have begun our countdown for publishing our very first book! We created this page to tell people about our adventures and make more people aware of the growing need for volunteers in Florida State Parks. We stated we were writing a book about our adventures as well. We are release our first in a series of books, hopefully, within the next 30 days on Amazon as a Kindle eBook. It will be called: “Insiders Guide to Being a Campground Host in Florida Parks – Free Campsites for Volunteering”. Yes, I know it is a long title. We decided to write this one first as a reference book for future and current RVers who want to try workamping as volunteers in one of our great Florida Parks. We have contacted all the Florida State Parks, Florida County Parks, Florida State Forests and the Florida National Parks and Forests who have campground and park host positions. It will be a great starting place for people to find out which parks offer free campsites in exchange for volunteering. We have been gathering the information for about 5 months and have finally gotten enough responses to finish off the book and get it published. From our previous posts in May you can read about a few of the many great places you can volunteer at in Florida all year round. Once, we have done the final edit and submitted it to Amazon they will give us a link to post on our website and all of our social media accounts!
Till next time!
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