Deciding If A Campground Job Is For You

Welcome

Last week I started talking about workamping. I brought up different ways you could be making money while out traveling. I spoke about the mindset of working on the road. I mentioned both working on and off campgrounds.

Working off campgrounds can cover a wide variety of jobs. Too wide for the scope of this blog. Just know that off campground jobs can be almost anything and can be found in places like Craigs List, Job search sights like indeed, or even walking around town and seeing a ‘help wanted” sign in the window.

For the sake of this blog, I am going to assume you took a workamping job at a campground. The advantage of this is you have no travel time or expense. You usually get your full hook up site covered, your electric paid, maybe a laundry allowance, propane, a store discount and depending on how many hours you work a small salary.

The variations in your compensation will depend on how many hours you work and your experience. Make sure you discuss your job duties and compensation before you accept any job. You will usually get a phone interview with the campground since most times you are not even in the same state.

If there is one thing that I can stress here is that during your interview, be completely honest. If you don’t know electrical or plumbing don’t tell them you do. If you have a physical limitation and can’t do physical labor, don’t apply for a job that requires physical labor. If you hate cleaning, don’t apply for a housekeeping job. I think you get the idea. In the end, you will arrive at your new job and be miserable the entire time or wind up having to leave.

After your phone interview, if you have been offered and accepted the job, it’s a good idea to have your new employer send you an e-mail outlining everything you spoke about in your interview. Your duties, compensation, and dates of employment. That way everything is in writing and there are no gray areas.

Ok, your searching the sites and wondering what would you be doing at a campground? You know how to camp, bbq, and light campfires but are those jobs? No….lol.

Basically, a good way to think of it would be like you would be a homeowner with a really big house and lots of guests. There are lawns to mow, projects to do, cleaning, and helping people have a good time.

I found my first workamping experience a blast. I loved talking to all the guests, seeing their rigs and set-ups, and hearing their stories. All the while working of course.

In talking about the different jobs, I will break it down into inside and outside. Inside jobs would be things like taking reservations, cleaning, or selling items in a store.

Outside jobs can be things like landscaping, escorting, filling propane tanks, emptying garbage, painting. There are always things to fix. If you are good with electrical or plumbing there are always issues at sites that need to be dealt with. There may be playground equipment to install or fix, roads to be repaired or even black tank pump-outs.

Campgrounds are busy and many people are constantly coming in and out of sites. Hooking and unhooking and using amenities over and over things will break and need to be fixed. You may even be called upon to drive a tractor to pull the daily hayride!

So you see, you may be pulled in many different directions during the course of the day. There are numerous jobs around a campground that need to be done. Some are fun and some, not so much. This is why it’s super important to establish exactly what your job will be before you get there.

The other thing that you might possibly gain during the course of your employment is friends. We worked and met some of the greatest people. We had many hours of fun both working with and after hours. Towards the end of our assignments, we were all exchanging e-mails and phone numbers and talking about meeting up on the road in the future.

So the bottom line is working for a campground is not always easy. The pay is not that good and you will most likely work weekends and holidays. So why would anyone want to do it?

We do it because we don’t mind a little hard work (it keeps us young). We don’t need a lot of pay to survive. Keep your debt low and you won’t either. We get to pick an area we want to explore, find a job at a campground in that area and explore on our days off. Since we work weekends and holidays, everywhere we explore is usually much less crowded during the week when we are off. We have no travel expenses to get to and from work (ok, maybe a pair of sneakers) and meet some really great people. That’s enough for us.

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