Campground Hosts Needed in Florida
By Tara Roberts
Of the 158 state parks in Florida, nearly a third
offer some sort of camping facilities. Whether you
want to rough it in a primitive campsite with no modern
conveniences, or set up your home-away-from-home luxury
RV, a Florida State Park has what you’re looking
for.
Campers can enjoy Florida’s natural beauty and idyllic weather year round. State parks dot the Gulf and East Coast. Parks can be found in north, south and central Florida where inland waterways provide fast currents for canoeing and kayaking. Camping facilities in these parks offer sites that provide water and electrical hookups, and most parks have bathroom and shower facilities. More than a dozen parks also offer cabins equipped with kitchens and real beds.
For a lucky few, the perfect camping option is serving as a volunteer campground host. The year-round, short-term post - lasting no more than three to four months - offers a free campsite in any of 78 state parks in exchange for as few as 20 hours a week work.
Duties include keeping the campgrounds orderly, cleaning campsites to make them ready for new campers, cleaning the bathhouses and keeping them stocked with paper products, and performing small maintenance and repair jobs.
Hosts, in return, are given a designated campsite with water and electrical hookups at no charge for the duration of their stay. Often couples serve as campground hosts, dividing up the necessary tasks between them.
Many hosts have also begun making the posting an annual visit to the Sunshine State. According to some rangers and park managers, the heat of the summer makes finding hosts difficult during those months, but for many visiting snowbirds from colder states, the host post is a way of life.
Dale Shingler, park manager at Grayton Beach State Park in South Walton County, said many hosts stay only a few months, and then move on to another Florida park or even a different state. “Some travel around the whole year,” he added.
Shingler said he tries to match hosts’ skills with projects needing to be done in the park.
“One host refurnished furniture,” Shingler said, adding that the Mississippi man helped restore furniture in the cabins at the park.
Another couple is expected back in September from Ohio. “Joe is a mechanic. He overhauls all the camp’s power tools,” Shingler said, “the weed eaters, mowers, chainsaws everything.”
Ranger Jason Soileau, volunteer coordinator at Fred Gannon State Park in Niceville, said he is seeing many more repeat camp hosts during the fall and winter months.
Soileau, has several returning hosts including one couple from Iowa who first came to the area to visit family a few years ago. “This will be the third year they have been Camp Hosts,” he said.
“Some hosts, that’s what they do,” Soileau
said. “They were electricians, plumbers, and
they do all of it.” Typically, he added, the
rangers or other professionals do most major jobs.
Soileau said the host is only obligated to work 20-25 hours a week for the park, but many hosts “go above and beyond.”
“The last host (at Fred Gannon State Park), kept it immaculate,” he said.
Phil Werndli, Coordinator of Volunteer Services for Florida State Parks, said the campground host program, patterned after the National Parks program, has been in place since the early 1970s.
“It has been incredibly popular and effective for us,” he said. “We have some hosts that have been working with us for 15 years.”
The program is not just volunteers serving as campground hosts, Werndli said. In addition to the 48 parks offering camping facilities, another 20 without camping have host postings. Volunteers do much more than just keep the campgrounds clean, he said.
“They work at the front gate, do interpretive presentations, land restoration, research, pretty much everything a ranger does,” he added. “We couldn’t do it without them.”
The state parks system has about 7,000 volunteers annually logging in more than 900,000 hours of service, as much as 436 full-time employees.
“The volunteer hours are just staggering,” said Shingler.
For more information on volunteering in Florida State Parks call (850) 245-3098 or visit Florida State Parks online at http://www.floridastateparks.org and contact a specific park for volunteer opportunities.