Here’s the job EVERYONE wants!

Salt Springs has to be Florida’s best….very best! Campground. It’s well run by American Land & Leisure. Employees get a free site for as little as 5 hours of work a week. And you are paid minimum wage for your hours. There’s an activities barn with a full schedule of fun get-togethers and staff and campers who are living together as one caring family. Sweet! In fact, this fabulous park-like campground is so popular that every day of the week campers stop by asking how they can camp host here.

Office where we asked for a Job

We asked for a job ourselves, and there’s so many waiting in line to get in, we were given a zero percent chance of being hired. An “internship” is required, where you work through the summer to show you are the right stuff and deserve the job. We’ve lived through 14 Florida summers and you don’t know hot until you’ve experienced stifling, still, super-heated, 100% humidified air. If you aren’t used to it, it can even be life threatening. We went to the Forest Service Visitor Center and found out they need help there, so we blew the dust off of our application and tried to reach someone at the ranger station about getting a job.  We spent hours trying to get an email through to the volunteer coordinator (there's no internet service in The Ocala).  After two days we finally got through and received the following email with 4 generous offers:

Hi Eileen,
I found your application.  Chris mentioned to me that he felt you had great qualifications and would be a great addition to our volunteer program.  We may have a spot opening at the SSVC [the visitors' center link] if we can't work out some details with the current inbound volunteers but I don't know as yet.  We have 3 other sites open:  Delancy West, River Forest, and Big Scrub.

Campground host:  Delancy West is an OHV (Off Highway Vehicle) campground year round and also serves as a huntcamp from November thru January each year.  The host site is primitive and offers a landline and septic.  Water is brought to the host site by forest service employees or volunteers and a gasoline allowance is provided by the FS for a host provided generator.  This position is available right now.  Lake Delancy Link

Campground host - River Forest Recreation Area is a group site available by reservation only.  The camp ground is located on the St. Johns River.  The rec area is currently closed for use while we upgrade the the facilities but we like to have volunteer on hand to help keep up with maintenance and provide security.  This position is available right now.  The host site is full hook up.  River Forest Link

Recreation maintenance - Big Scrub Recreation area is and OHV campground year round.  The majority of the sites are available by reservations with a few sites remaining on a first come first serve basis.  Big Scrub has approximately 60 campsites, 3 full hookup host sites and 2 new (3 yrs old) bathhouses.  This position is available January 1- April 15.  The available position is a recreation maintenance position; duties include assisting with trash removal, bathrooms, mowing, etc.  Big Scrub Link

Camp Hosts - Is there such a thing as a bad one?

Are you kidding? Camp Hosts are the hardest working, friendliest, most giving people we have ever worked with. And we've had a TON of jobs. (Just look at our business card collection some time.) Here at Bahia Honda they work until they are soaked in sweat or rain (or both) despite ravenous, agressive mosquitoes, plastic-eating rats, scorpions and never-ending beach garbage that washes in from ??? (We don't know where from, or we could send it back.) Above Thel is happily greeting visitors from all over the world in the Nature Center, and Theresa has just ended a tough shift of cleaning bathrooms, shower houses, emptying garbage, picking up trash, etc., and she's still here with her generous smile...ready to give you a hug, if you're needing one.

The EZ-Go electric vehicles cost thousands of dollars per year to maintain. The high UV index, coral dust and gusting salty sea winds keep the repairs coming. The keys are made of the remains of an ancient coral reef, so the tires don't have a chance running over cutting coral chunks. We know! Our first day on the job we had a huge "firecracker" thrown under our EZ-Go, and we came to a sudden halt....only to discover a front tire had blown out (with a BOOM) after its coral encounter.

So...did I answer the question? Are there bad hosts? NO, emphatically, "no"....we have never found a bad camp host...after a life time of camping. My hypothesis: They don't exist, so the question was not necessary.