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!
Tag: Workamping in Florida State Parks
Left Troy Springs Now at St Sebastian Preserve
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.
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Summer on the Suwannee
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.
Goodbye Woods Ferry Hello Big Shoals
Goodbye Woods Ferry, Hello Big Shoals! Well, we finally made it to our new assignment. We will miss Woods Ferry River Camp with it’s sewer on-site, being able to take long, hot showers and free washer and dryer. We may even miss the river campers who came almost every weekend and some through the week. Big Shoals State Park has a cement pad park host site with electric and water behind the bathroom building and across from the picnic area next to the Suwannee River. The site itself may seem like it was put in backwards but it works. We had to drive in the wrong way around to pull into the park host site. This small park area has a circular, one-way, paved drive and with the RV utility hook-ups on the drivers side it was easier to come in the wrong way than to back into the site. Luckily, through the week, the park doesn’t get a lot of visitors. Since we don’t own a “Blue Boy” we had to purchase about sixty feet of sewer hose to be able to dump our black and gray water tanks. The sewer outlet is right next to the bathroom building on the side along with an outdoor cold shower. Since, it is a “Day Use” only state park when we lock the entrance gates at night there will be no visitors.
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