Tag: Volunteering in Florida State Parks

Rainbow Springs Needs A Campground Host

February 7, 2018 Jolene MacFadden

I just received a message from one of my fellow Full-Time RVing volunteer campground hosts. Alisha and her family are hosting in Rainbow Springs State Park over the next couple of months and need a partnered couple for the camping area. The campground is fairly big with 54 reservable campsites including 44 RV/Tent, 3 RV only,
7 Tent Only, laundry rooms and has 4 bath houses that need to be cleaned daily. The sites are checked and cleaned when the campers leave, of course. The RV/Tents sites all have electric, water and sewers on site which is extremely nice for the campers but the Tent-Only area only has electric with water faucets. And there is landscaping to help keep clean and looking neat. During the week the campground office opens at 10 am Friday 8:30 am on Saturday. You can start cleaning bathrooms whenever you like, but you can’t pick up the camping report until the office opens.

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

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

Getting Around SSRPSP as Park Hosts

November 14, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

Getting around SSRPSP (St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park) as park hosts can be a little daunting to new volunteers. Of course, with any new assignment it will take a while for you to get your bearings as to where everything is, whom to contact when you need new supplies or equipment as well as getting your new duties for that week or the rest of the month. The Volunteer Coordinator will be the main person you ask most of your questions, get your assignments and requests to be trained on whatever equipment or tools you are not familiar with. If he or she is unavailable you can always ask of one of the other park personnel but if it is not urgent you should email or text the coordinator. It helps the coordinator to be able to keep track of the volunteers, what they know and what they are doing so please make them your main point of contact. For the next two months our Volunteer Coordinator will be on maternity leave so the park hosts will be asking the Park Manager or the Weekend Park Ranger-in-Charge. Of course, if one of the other park personnel request your assistance to help them complete their current task and you feel comfortable doing it then by all means help them out.

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

St Sebastian River Preserve State Park

November 7, 2015 Jolene MacFadden

St Sebastian River Preserve State Park has been a fairly great experience for us these last two and a half months. The staff has been great to work with, helpful to the volunteers and each other, and always willing to teach us volunteers anything that needs doing within the park system. The Volunteer Coordinator, Heidi, is an extremely nice lady who just wants her volunteers to have a good time while working in the park. She has tried her best to accommodate everyone’s schedule and preferences while coordinating all the projects that the park needs to get done within the month. And as a good volunteer coordinator she makes sure that all of us have been properly trained in all the duties assigned as well as any equipment that needs to be utilized in getting those jobs done. We would not have any problem coming back here again for another assignment. If you are looking for a quiet place to spend a couple of months in south Florida, especially during the late spring to early fall, we hope you will contact the park for a live on-site volunteer position!

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

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.

Read More “Summer on the Suwannee” »

Campground Host Experiences, Lessons in Camping, RV and Campers, Sights to See, Volunteer At A Florida State Park, Workamping