Tag: Volunteer in Florida State Parks

Closing Down and Moving Over

February 8, 2021May 23, 2022 Jolene MacFadden

Closing Down and Moving Over

Hello to my fans, if I have any left, our plans for going tiny did not work out at all. I had to return the shed as the county we live in was cracking down on all living spaces that were not just going to be outside offices, shops, or storage. Meanies!

Sadly, my mom’s health is not the best and we are going to have to buy a sticks-n-bricks here in the North Florida area. We may get back to visiting and camping in state parks eventually but it does not look good for us for now.

Volunteer At A Florida State Park

Sign Petition to Fully Fund Fl State Parks

April 28, 2019 Jolene MacFadden

Hey, guys our Florida State Parks budget is coming up soon and the monies are not nearly enough to help bring back all the state parks affected by the hurricanes the past couple of years. We need to tell the governor and representatives that we want our Florida State Parks and public land areas repaired, upgraded and fully-funded! There is a posting on Twitter and Facebook with a link to the petition and once signed gives you the contact information and a sample email to send to the Florida representatives.

https://secure.floridastateparksfoundation.org/page/s/sign-the-petition-we-need-fully-funded-state-parks

Campground Host Experiences, RV and Campers, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping

Left Troy Springs Now at St Sebastian Preserve

September 9, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

We have left Troy Springs State Park and have made it to St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park in Fellsmere, Florida which is 20 miles west of Sebastian Inlet State Park in Vero Beach, Florida. This is a fairly new state park and being a “Preserve” it doesn’t have a lot of things to do here. They do have a new Visitor’s Center at the North Entrance with very nice and informative displays. We start working the center tomorrow so we will be able to take some pictures for our readers. There is primitive camping here is specific areas of the park, fishing at the spillway along the canal and lots of trails all over the 23,000 acres. They have a Volunteer Village on the north side with electric, water and sewers onsite. They also provide the live on-site volunteers with a washer and dryer to use once or twice a week. They are currently working on getting a shower area but at this time it is just a shower head with cold water attached to the back of the storage shed. We are assigned days to wash and dump our black water as the sewer system in this area is not very big. Someone donated a very nice double door refrigerator that the volunteers can use. Of course, the first thing I did when we got here was clean that puppy up. It is so nice to have ice cold drinks and space in the fridge so we can now buy more food at one time.

Campground Host Experiences, Park Info, 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.

Our First Press Release

November 14, 2014 Jolene MacFadden

Our first press release has been created and posted on the PRLOG.org website. They offer free press release services for writers, small businesses and anyone else who needs to make an announcement of a new book, service, and even non-profit stuff. They create embed codes to add to your website, tweet it, post to Linkedin…

Read More “Our First Press Release” »

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

Our First Month at Big Shoals

October 6, 2014 Jolene MacFadden

Our first month at Big Shoals State Park has been uneventful and some would say even boring. But the weather is getting cooler and we are having a relaxing time. There are quite a few visitors that come every weekend but not so much during the week. We have been having problems with keeping the equipment going and we are no mechanics. The park currently only has one park ranger and waiting on a park services specialist to be hired. The park has a lovely picnic area right next to the river high on a bluff with picnic tables, barbecue grills and one fire pit.

There is a canoe/kayak launch down a sloping path that is overgrown with roots and has railroad ties as steps every so often. There a platform and some steps leading down into the river. There are no canoe/kayak racks for paddlers come down the Suwannee River before the park. Mostly, they come to launch to go the white water rapids area. The river is currently high and running fairly fast. With all the rain we have had over the last 4 weeks all the trails are wet with some even flooded in places. The 3 mile lone paved Woodpecker trail has to be blown off every week but we have only managed it one time since we have been here.

Campground Host Experiences, Park Info, Volunteer At A Florida State Park