Workampers?

[JCZhome]

Any of you full timers ever done the Workamping Rendavouze in Heber Springs, Ark.

Did you enjoy it? Was it worth the cost? Tell us about your personal experience please?

[Second Chance]

You might ask this question over on RV-Dreams.com. I remember a couple of years ago quite a bit of discussion about that rally/seminar/whatever-you-call it. We almost went, but it didn't fit into our schedule.

Rob

[JCZhome]

Well, we went to the Workampers Rendezvous last fall. Then we went down to Texas and I took the RV Maint. Tech. training. Learned a lot in those few weeks, hands on with every type of RV there is (except pop-ups). Then stayed on to become a certified RV Inspector through NRVIA.

Left Tex. and went to Florida for the winter.....had a great time and made it all the way down to Key West, Tampa, Miami Beach, Daytona Beach for the motorcycle bike week and gradually worked our way north Savannah, Ga. Charleston, etc. before we went inland to Maggie Valley, NC.

We are now workamping here for the summer, in the Black Hills. A great place to spend a summer! We work 8 hrs. each (16 hrs. total) for our RV space and full hook ups for the week. Babe works in the office additional hours to make some play money. I mostly just ride the Black Hills on my bike, RV maint. etc.

[D2Reid]

We work 8 hrs. each (16 hrs. total) for our RV space and full hook ups for the week. Babe works in the office additional hours to make some play money.

We started out in Florida/Georgia/NC. Had a great time camphosting at the Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area in the west end of VA. Did a gig up in NH for a private campground. Volunteer gigs: camphost, Jonathan Dickinson SP, FL; Galveston Island State Park, TX; Deception Pass State Park, WA; Unicoi State Park, GA; Cloudland Canyon SP in NW GA. Did grounds keeping/camphost at the Savenac Historical Tree Nursery in the Lolo NF near Superior, MT. Interpretive work we did day use hosting at Fish Creek Falls, in Steamboat Springs, CO; Worked the visitor center at Smith Rock State Park near Bend, OR; And this summer we are running the Nature Center at Jordanelle State Park, UT.

We have bailed on 3 jobs: A campworker job at an orphanage near Pheonix, AZ. We did intake for the thrift shop, within 30 days both of us had been sick from the contamination of the crap people would bring in, literally crap. A private campground in AZ, coordinated maintenance/office working the weekends. Showed up and they said sorry, we want you to work M-F 40 hours for your free site, no pay, we said see ya, then they made us pay for the one night stay in the rv park. We worked 2 weeks at a private campground in Estes Park. Lets just say that we failed to gain the owners respect and I disagreed with a lot of the owners policies on the way treated their guests.

I use a mathematical gauge to determine value of the "free" site. Find out what the average monthly rate is for an RV site in the area you are interested in. Multiply the minimum wage rate for the state you are in times the number of hours you are expected to work in a month. If the hours time wage is not reasonably close to what a site costs for a month then you are being taken advantage of. You must also factor in the feel good stuff, beauty of site, satisfaction in giving back to the organization, socialization with fellow workers, etc. That has value you really can't put a price on, but it does make up the difference when the math isn't working out right.

Part time jobs. If we wanted to work full time we would still be working at our high paying career jobs, so full time is out. We work short term part time jobs that are interesting to us and fun for us. Barbara is still compelled to work, so she takes more jobs than I do. She worked as an elf at a mall Santa photo shoot in Austin during the Christmas season; she conned me into working at the non-profit book store at Mt. Rushmore NM, I totally sucked as a cashier so they relegated me to the audio tour booth, I could handle $5 each purchase, no change involved, no inventory numbers to memorize, etc. Barbara excelled at it. She was also happy working in the camp store at Unicoi SP, GA.

The last 3 years we have worked at the Park City Ski Mountain Resort, UT I've kicked around trying to find my niche. Line Ticket Scanner, Mountain Safety Patrol, and ticket sales line manager/greeter. Barbara likes the challenge of the ticket window, you wouldn't believe the complexity of their systems. She continues to like it even though she got her toes badly frost bit the first year.

For us, it's all about living a full life that we enjoy. After many years of constraints we are finally in a position to choose what we want to do or not want to do based solely on our own desires. To me that makes it a fulfilling retirement.

[JCZhome]

We started out in Florida/Georgia/NC. Had a great time camphosting at the Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area in the west end of VA. Did a gig up in NH for a private campground. Volunteer gigs: camphost, Jonathan Dickinson SP, FL; Galveston Island State Park, TX; Deception Pass State Park, WA; Unicoi State Park, GA; Cloudland Canyon SP in NW GA. Did grounds keeping/camphost at the Savenac Historical Tree Nursery in the Lolo NF near Superior, MT. Interpretive work we did day use hosting at Fish Creek Falls, in Steamboat Springs, CO; Worked the visitor center at Smith Rock State Park near Bend, OR; And this summer we are running the Nature Center at Jordanelle State Park, UT.

We have bailed on 3 jobs: A campworker job at an orphanage near Pheonix, AZ. We did intake for the thrift shop, within 30 days both of us had been sick from the contamination of the crap people would bring in, literally crap. A private campground in AZ, coordinated maintenance/office working the weekends. Showed up and they said sorry, we want you to work M-F 40 hours for your free site, no pay, we said see ya, then they made us pay for the one night stay in the rv park. We worked 2 weeks at a private campground in Estes Park. Lets just say that we failed to gain the owners respect and I disagreed with a lot of the owners policies on the way treated their guests.

I use a mathematical gauge to determine value of the "free" site. Find out what the average monthly rate is for an RV site in the area you are interested in. Multiply the minimum wage rate for the state you are in times the number of hours you are expected to work in a month. If the hours time wage is not reasonably close to what a site costs for a month then you are being taken advantage of. You must also factor in the feel good stuff, beauty of site, satisfaction in giving back to the organization, socialization with fellow workers, etc. That has value you really can't put a price on, but it does make up the difference when the math isn't working out right.

Part time jobs. If we wanted to work full time we would still be working at our high paying career jobs, so full time is out. We work short term part time jobs that are interesting to us and fun for us. Barbara is still compelled to work, so she takes more jobs than I do. She worked as an elf at a mall Santa photo shoot in Austin during the Christmas season; she conned me into working at the non-profit book store at Mt. Rushmore NM, I totally sucked as a cashier so they relegated me to the audio tour booth, I could handle $5 each purchase, no change involved, no inventory numbers to memorize, etc. Barbara excelled at it. She was also happy working in the camp store at Unicoi SP, GA.

The last 3 years we have worked at the Park City Ski Mountain Resort, UT I've kicked around trying to find my niche. Line Ticket Scanner, Mountain Safety Patrol, and ticket sales line manager/greeter. Barbara likes the challenge of the ticket window, you wouldn't believe the complexity of their systems. She continues to like it even though she got her toes badly frost bit the first year.

For us, it's all about living a full life that we enjoy. After many years of constraints we are finally in a position to choose what we want to do or not want to do based solely on our own desires. To me that makes it a fulfilling retirement.

I could relate to your whole story Dallas and a few chuckles in there, too. But the last sentence expresses my sentiments and thoughts best! Thanks a bunch for putting in to words exactly how I feel about it.

[JCZhome]

Talking about workamping......we just accepted a seasonal (closed in winter) management position at Flaming Gorge so we will be leaving the Black Hills in about ten days.

[orbiker]

We are still working stiffs. We will be learning from your experiences. Good or bad.

2 more years till the house is sold, KEN

[TravelingwithTucson]

We started out in Florida/Georgia/NC. Had a great time camphosting at the Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area in the west end of VA. Did a gig up in NH for a private campground. Volunteer gigs: camphost, Jonathan Dickinson SP, FL; Galveston Island State Park, TX; Deception Pass State Park, WA; Unicoi State Park, GA; Cloudland Canyon SP in NW GA. Did grounds keeping/camphost at the Savenac Historical Tree Nursery in the Lolo NF near Superior, MT. Interpretive work we did day use hosting at Fish Creek Falls, in Steamboat Springs, CO; Worked the visitor center at Smith Rock State Park near Bend, OR; And this summer we are running the Nature Center at Jordanelle State Park, UT.

We have bailed on 3 jobs: A campworker job at an orphanage near Pheonix, AZ. We did intake for the thrift shop, within 30 days both of us had been sick from the contamination of the crap people would bring in, literally crap. A private campground in AZ, coordinated maintenance/office working the weekends. Showed up and they said sorry, we want you to work M-F 40 hours for your free site, no pay, we said see ya, then they made us pay for the one night stay in the rv park. We worked 2 weeks at a private campground in Estes Park. Lets just say that we failed to gain the owners respect and I disagreed with a lot of the owners policies on the way treated their guests.

I use a mathematical gauge to determine value of the "free" site. Find out what the average monthly rate is for an RV site in the area you are interested in. Multiply the minimum wage rate for the state you are in times the number of hours you are expected to work in a month. If the hours time wage is not reasonably close to what a site costs for a month then you are being taken advantage of. You must also factor in the feel good stuff, beauty of site, satisfaction in giving back to the organization, socialization with fellow workers, etc. That has value you really can't put a price on, but it does make up the difference when the math isn't working out right.

Part time jobs. If we wanted to work full time we would still be working at our high paying career jobs, so full time is out. We work short term part time jobs that are interesting to us and fun for us. Barbara is still compelled to work, so she takes more jobs than I do. She worked as an elf at a mall Santa photo shoot in Austin during the Christmas season; she conned me into working at the non-profit book store at Mt. Rushmore NM, I totally sucked as a cashier so they relegated me to the audio tour booth, I could handle $5 each purchase, no change involved, no inventory numbers to memorize, etc. Barbara excelled at it. She was also happy working in the camp store at Unicoi SP, GA.

The last 3 years we have worked at the Park City Ski Mountain Resort, UT I've kicked around trying to find my niche. Line Ticket Scanner, Mountain Safety Patrol, and ticket sales line manager/greeter. Barbara likes the challenge of the ticket window, you wouldn't believe the complexity of their systems. She continues to like it even though she got her toes badly frost bit the first year.

For us, it's all about living a full life that we enjoy. After many years of constraints we are finally in a position to choose what we want to do or not want to do based solely on our own desires. To me that makes it a fulfilling retirement.

Good advice! I have been FT for 20 years. I believe I worked at that same campground in Estes Park. 1st job I ever quit. Lasted 3 weeks then went to Whitefish MT and worked for Delaware North, wonderful job and people. Am now retired on SS and can be more picky about jobs. New to forum, hope I commented correctly!
Full-timing in 2018 GD Reflection 337RLS,

[D2Reid]

New to forum, hope I commented correctly!
Full-timing in 2018 GD Reflection 337RLS,

You have done well. 20 years? Amazing. I look forward to hearing your perspective on the RV industry and it's growth.