What in the world is work-camping? In this TTT episode, you will learn what work-camping is and how you could become a work-camper too!
As many of you know, in 2022, we did the unthinkable. Quit our jobs in our early 50’s, sold everything, and went on a 9 month, 30 state cross country road trip in a 20-foot Airstream travel trailer (with our dog!). We call it our self-induced sabbatical and escape from the corporate rat race. Others may call it risky, foolish, careless, or just plain crazy!
Crazy? Well…..maybe a little, but sometimes when you force yourself to take a 180 degree life pivot, you may find yourself going through positive mental and physical transformations and exceptional personal growth.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t have a long term plan. The only focus was what we wanted to do in the day or two we had ahead of us. Strangely, I could feel the stress and anxiety of my previous day to day life flow out of my body like paper lanterns lifting away in a gentle breeze, leaving behind a sense of calm and clarity. What a perfect way to start my next life chapter.
After about 6 months on the road, and hundreds of experiences checked off our bucket lists, it was time to start bringing the next phase of our lives into clearer focus. As we began to search for ways we could continue this adventurous lifestyle, one word kept coming up again and again – work-camping or as some call it “workamping”. We first learned about work-camping when speaking to one of the employees at the KOA near Washington D.C. Then again when we talked to a couple of people working at the KOA near Philadelphia. We discovered that this was a low-cost way to travel where you trade a certain number of hours of work per week as a trade for your campsite, and in some cases, you could even make money depending on how many hours you could commit to each week.
This is when the wheels started turning. Workamping could be our ticket to continuing the nomadic lifestyle we have grown to love without having to dip into our savings. So, naturally we dug deeper. Step 1 was figuring out where we wanted to live for an extended period of time. From the time we spent in the New England Area, the choice was easy, and we quickly settled on either the New Hampshire coast or Maine. The weather is mild, the scenery is beautiful, and the humidity is low, making for a comfortable summer escape. Step 2 was making a list of campsites we either stayed at or would like to explore. Step 3 was reaching out to our prospective employers. Since neither of us had worked at a campground before, we weren’t sure where to start. So, naturally we created a snazzy resume highlighting our skillsets and emailed it to our top 5 prospects.
Duties at a campground typically include keeping up the grounds, lawn mowing, weeding, raking leaves, tiding up campsites, cleaning the bathrooms and showers, and escorting campers to their sites, to office tasks like checking people in, booking new reservations, answering the phones and on occasion light electrical and or plumbing jobs. Certainly tasks we could manage, but hadn’t been our typical day to day throughout our professional careers.
We went from thinking, who is going to hire us without any campground maintenance experience, to we just heard back from 4 of our top 5 and get to choose where we want to go! That was a nice ego boost, and it was exciting and comforting to know we were going to have a place to settle and make some extra cash to cover our food and gas expenses for a while.
The next step – The Interview
(This might not be how it always goes with every work camp experience, but his is how it played out for us.)
After deciding on where we wanted to workcamp, we set up a zoom call to meet with the owners of the campground.
We met with Steve and Astrig from Searsport Shores Campground which is on the coast of Maine in Searsport. At the time we were back in California about to embark on a 10-week trip to Southeast Asia and Steve and Astrig were about to head south for the winter (as many Mainers do) and spend some time in the Caribbean and then pop over to Thailand as well!
We learned all about them and their campground, what duties we would be performing over the summer, and how their work-camp system operates. We really hit it off and accepted a position with them that would start mid-May and go through the end of September.
I will save the details of our workamping experience at Searsport Shores for another post, but the biggest takeaway was we arrived as strangers, and we left as family. We couldn’t be more grateful for the experience we had there, and feel that the impact they made on our lives was as big as the impression we left on them.
So, to recap. If you are interested in becoming a workamper, where you can trade your time and skills for a place to park your camper and live rent free for a while follow these simple steps:
- Pick and area you would like to live.
- Research campgrounds in the area (simple google maps search)
- Make a list of 5 – 10 campgrounds to contact.
- Keep in mind each campground is different. Searsport Shores is a family business. State campgrounds typically have a receptionist and/or a camp host overseeing the operations. Other campgrounds like KOA are franchises and have a manager or owner who makes the decisions. Each situation will be different so it will depend on where you want to work and if you prefer a corporate feel (KOA) or a more laid back experience.
- It doesn’t hurt to put a resume together highlighting your skillset making you a desirable hire. (Most campgrounds like to hire couples and they get 2 workers for the cost of 1 campsite, but they will hire individuals especially if you have a trade skill like electrician)
Note that some campsites operate year-round while others are seasonal. Some workampers will take a seasonal job in the north while the summer temps are mild and will take another job in the south during the winter months.
Good luck, and please reach out if you have any questions or have a workamp experience you would like to share.
-Tiny Trailer Trips crew
You’re both amazing!