Save money while pursuing your passion for RVing
by Gerald & Sharon Hammon
Are you looking for a new RV, but you’re afraid of hundreds-of-dollars of trips to the fuel pump? That is, are you driving less — and enjoying it less? Certainly for us, that idyllic dream of wandering the highways and byways paled a bit when we realized that filling the 75-gallon gas tank on our rig costs us more than $300. The pain at the pump is real and in all likelihood here to stay. Like most RVers, we aren’t about to mothball our motorhome. The lure of the open road still attracts us; we’ve simply had to discover strategies for spreading that gas-pump pain out over time. Increasingly, a major part of our travel strategy is work camping.
Most folks who own an RV or have considered buying one may be somewhat familiar with work camping, but may not know the specifics. In essence, we are trading our skills and our time for a place with full hookups to park the RV. If we’ve done our homework, both the place we give our skills and time to and the place we park the rig at are places we want to be and we get to do something we enjoy. The opportunities are almost endless.
Where Can You Work Camp?
The vast majority of work camping opportunities are at campgrounds, where owners find it financially beneficial to trade a full-hookup site for help in running the campground. The cost to the owner is usually much less than hiring someone part time or full time, particularly when benefits, in addition to salaries, are factored in. We’ve seen a number of work camping opportunities that appear to be hybrid, combining the exchange of a full-hookup site for a certain number of hours, with additional hours paid at the prevailing rates. Thus far, we haven’t wanted the jobs as campground hosts — that are often available — because these positions frequently involve handling late-night arrivals and security, two tasks we’d just as soon pass on, and we’ve never been good evening people. Fortunately for campground owners, there are a lot of night owls who are only too happy to take those positions.
In addition to campgrounds, there are an increasing number of public and private entities that realize the benefits of utilizing work campers to augment limited staff. Our entry into work camping was with such an entity — a private foundation that operated Fort Mandan in North Dakota, a replica of the fort where Lewis and Clark spent their first winter. Currently we work for Boyce Thompson Arboretum, a renowned arboretum in Arizona. Our duties have been as varied as the locations we visit, from gardening to leading tours to assisting the membership department at the arboretum.
We’ve worked for national, state and private entities, have gone through extensive background checks, and have worked at entry gates and gift shops handling thousands of dollars based on trust alone.
Pros and Cons
There are probably no absolutely ideal work camping situations. We’ve heard friends and acquaintances grouse about menial duties, unclear lines of authority or chains of command, too little to do, too much to do, etc. It isn’t much different from the work world we retired from, except that we don’t have to be involved in office “politics.” Regardless of how long our commitment is, it is still temporary and we will be “movin’ on.”
On the other hand, a little advance research may save a lot of unnecessary trouble, a lesson we’re still learning. We found ourselves in one situation where three couples had been hired as work campers, with only a vague understanding of what was expected. As it turned out, the employers wanted folks who could work at groundskeeping and operating heavy equipment, a skill that only one of the six of us had. The rest of us spent a lot of dead time twiddling our thumbs, waiting for something to do. And we still recall a conversation with a couple who signed on at a campground, only to find out that even on their days off, they were expected to be on site and available every night! Their day off consisted of 8am-5pm; after that, the owner expected them to be back on duty.
Conversely, when you find yourself living in beautiful surroundings, working with people who are committed to their work and enjoyable to be with, work camping can be hard to beat. It gets even better when you take advantage of a location that offers you additional incentives, such as an area you are unfamiliar with and want to explore, or a place you are already familiar with and love, or even a location close to children and grandchildren. We have found in the kind of work camping we’ve sought that it’s easy to get caught up in the mission of the agency we are working for, and we work many more hours than are required without a second thought. As one friend remarked, it’s a nice feeling at our age to be wanted.
As an added benefit, we’ve found that work camping has encouraged us to learn and exercise our brains and our bodies. We’ve been immersed in Lewis and Clark, marveled at the civilization of the Mandan Indians, read of the history of a great cattle baron and the life of a mining magnate, and struggled to learn the names of flowers in a banner year for wildflowers. We’ve rejoiced at sharing our newfound knowledge with others, particularly young people, and in learning from the many people who have been willing to share their knowledge with us.
Through work camping, we’ve found a way to use our limited retirement income in a way that allows us to continue traveling. We’ve also discovered that by spending more time in an area than we would have previously, our enjoyment of our travels has increased as well. In looking back, before we began work camping, we covered a lot of ground, but did so rather superficially. Now, we can plan our time and our travel so that we have not one home base, but several.
How to Get Started
The entrance into the world of work camping is surprisingly easy. Twenty years ago, Greg Robus began publication of a magazine that would link employers desiring work campers with people who wanted to do work camping. His efforts resulted in Workamper News, and in an organization that serves employers and job seekers with daily e-mails of job opportunities and several layers of specialized assistance. We first subscribed to the magazine three years ago and our first work camping experience was nine weeks long. We chuckle at that as we’ve been at our present assignment for more than five months and look forward to being able to return for another six.
While a publication such as Workamper News may be the vehicle to get you started, it’s still up to you to make contact with potential employers and work out the details of your assignments. Workamper News offers numerous avenues of assistance, suggestions on how to frame your resume, advice about what you should cover in your negotiations and ways to check others’ experiences with potential employers. Once you enter the world of work camping, you’ll find other work campers to be primary resources on places they’ve worked and loved, as well as places you’d probably prefer to avoid. One person’s cup of tea might be another’s poison, so it’s up to you to do your due diligence with potential employers.
Even though work camping at heart is a voluntary relationship, we’ve been disturbed to learn from employers that some work campers treat job commitments rather casually, not showing up without any notification, or abruptly cutting short their commitment for superficial reasons. Trust works both ways — if you want an employer to honor their commitment to you, you have to abide by your commitment to them.
In summary, work camping has been a way for us to spread a finite income in a way that enables us to continue traveling, learning and enjoying our RVing lifestyle. For more information on work camping, check out Workamper News, or simply talk to the volunteers you meet in campgrounds, parks and other public places. We’d be surprised if there aren’t numerous work campers among them. RVBG