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

Looking for a Job Camp Hosting in all the right places

Turn downs, “no openings”, “we have all of the help we can use“, “keep us in mind for next year”...

and other nice ways of letting us know we didn‘t get the job abounded this week. We did get two more job offers, but not in the Orlando area. We really do want to stay close to our son and his cute, cute wife and girls and to our nephew, Craig, and his wife, Tanya. They are expecting their first baby, and we just have to be a part of that. Besides, they all have Disney passes and I, like all of the world, want to go to Disney.

The two offers were intriguing: One in a Florida Preserve , helping in the visitor center, and the other in the Everglades, working in a lab studying marsh lichens . But the jobs were not only too far from family but involved too many scheduled hours, which would kill exploratory trips. Florida truly is Adventureland. And I’m done with 100% of my time being tied up with work.  We need time to play with little mermaids and baby tigers.

How to get Camp Hosting Jobs (National Parks)

It was September 2011 and we had no job to go to in Florida.  Then I was struck with an idea....an inspiration?  Well, we had been praying.  Why not apply to a national park?  Unlike Utah, Florida has only one.  So we called their volunteer coordinator.  Bob was so excited! because the job he was told about was being an interpretive guide at the formerly secret Nike Missile Site in the Everglades.  The RV site provided was just a mile away in beautiful woodland... so we could bike to the visitor's center.  Wow!...with our science background, this had to be the job.  We'd get a uniform and a propane allowance.  The job had barely been posted on http://www.volunteer.gov/gov/    We were told to fill out the online application.  We'd already sent in the paperwork to get a background check and an authorization for driving a government vehicle.  We needed to take a defensive driving course, provide a driving history (listing all of the vehicles we could drive and our hours on each of them) and a DMV 3-year driving record.  There's pages of government paperwork.  I can send you a copy, if you'd like.  The required driving tests were a bit intimidating. 

Visitors WELCOME....!!




A regular visitor to our Camp Host Site

 

Here's a young Mom Moose, who brought her baby by our camper window regularly.  Maybe because it was her first calf, she let campers get close.  (Never a good idea!)

A surprise benefit of our job was family can visit and even camp (free).  So our fashionable newest grandbaby even joined us.  Wonderful!  On one visit she forgot her bottle, so I found a new glove (from when I taught chemistry) for the nipple and Grandpa (known as Paka by the grandkids) donated an empty Coke bottle.  The contraption worked!  Ah.....this is roughing it.