Tag: Insiders Guide to Campground Hosting in Florida Parks

Come By and See Us

September 6, 2019 Jolene MacFadden

Over the next couple of weeks while the RVing season is ramping up here in Florida I decided to try and sell more copies of the reference guide I created for those who wanted to find out more about volunteer workamping in Florida. The guide is still good for everything except for the contact names. Florida State Park employees as well as some of the other employees at all of the organizations in the book have a tendency to retired, quit or change jobs quite often. So, even though the Volunteer Coordinator we have listed in the book may have moved on there is no reason why you couldn’t just ask for the current one and get their name and email address over the phone. Remember that each organization has their own procedures for getting new workampers it does not hurt to send a copy of your filled out application directly to the coordinator at the parks you want to volunteer at and say that you have submitted the documents as requested but would like to send them a copy just in case they didn’t receive one yet.

Getting Ready for Local Author Expo

June 28, 2016 Jolene MacFadden

We have been at our current assignment for 3 months now and have been really busy during our stay here. With no other volunteer we have been working 7 days a week since we got here. We have been updating our online stores with new items and I am working on a new book. In the mean time we have decided to offer our eBook version of our current book for 1/2 price for retail customers and $0.99 for Libraries. Below is a cute little widget from Smashwords to help promote our new pricing. We will be changing the Amazon Kindle price as well but not the paperback version. We only get a couple of dollars on these anyway.

Our eBook, Sights to See, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Volunteer at National Parks and Forest, Volunteer in Florida State Forests

Busy Busy Here at Anastasia

March 3, 2016 Jolene MacFadden

We have been so busy over the last couple of weeks and now we are down to less than 4 weeks remaining in our assignment here at Anastasia State Park. We have been having a pretty good time here and the weather, for the most part, has been quite nice. Between working in the campground, working here and there around the park, updating all our websites, getting our craft business ready for the Florida Folk Festival in May and trying to gather more material to write more articles for all my various blogs I haven’t had time to update this website.

We have also had some changes to the volunteer’s roster over the last two months with family emergencies and illnesses calling them home. Not much they could do about it but the volunteer coordinator here seems to have a long list of volunteers waiting to get in so she had replacements fairly quickly. Now we are getting ready for the big annual charity Poker Ride this coming weekend. Katie and I have volunteered our time to help out. Should be pretty interesting to have some of the bikers from Daytona Beach riding through. There will be music, games, and lots of food. We will have to take a some pictures and post them on our Facebook page.

Campground Host Experiences, Our eBook, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping, Working While RVing

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

New Year New Domain

January 26, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

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.

Only Two Weeks Left At Big Shoals

December 17, 2014 Jolene MacFadden

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.

We hope you and yours have a safe and happy holiday season. See you next year!

Campground Host Experiences, Funding Our Adventure, Holidays in the Parks, RV and Campers, Sights to See, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping