Living The McCray Way

What is work camping you ask, well it’s when you work at a campsite or state park while living in your RV.

When we started RVing we didn’t even know what work camping was and it wasn’t until we had been RVing for over a year that we decided to give it a try. But let us tell you how we actually got here…………………

Story Time

We were in South Carolina (Mooch docking on family land) we had a trip planned back to Florida to the keys after our son’s birthday in March. Our plan was to stop in Jacksonville to visit friends for a day or two and then head on down to the keys but just like anything in life something has to happen.

Our truck which is a Ford F-350 began to leak and not just a little but big puddle of fluid, if you know anything about vehicles leaking of any sort is not good and should be fixed asap.

Us being as budget friendly as we are thought to ourselves can we (Josh) fix it ourselves and save a whole lot of money. We headed straight to YouTube University and begin learning how to change the part that had a whole in it. It ended up costing us way less than a mechanic would on both parts and labor.

Now you may be wondering where we are fixing this at, well we were staying at a harvest host site (which you can head to our post on harvest host) and were only due to stay 1 night 2 at the max, but the most unorthodox thing happened the host for our particular site asked us to stay as long as we wanted.

Trouble comes but right behind it is your rainbow every time.

We ended up staying a little longer than our original plans. With having to fix the truck that changed our plans of going to the keys, so we begin to brainstorm on our next move. The idea of work camping was brought up (which we didn’t know much about), so we begin to research. We found a few that grabbed our attention which we applied. Then we headed to Facebook where we found so many groups (This is the place to look for any group you can think of, it’s there). The first group we found the manager had a post up looking for worker asap, we applied but kept looking. We got an immediate response which to us was shocking how quick they wanted to interview us, but we went along. Within 2 days we had been hired and were off to our new reality (which we were very cautious about)

Now fast forward …………………..

We have been work camping in Silver Springs Fl for 6 months at Juniper Springs. We have FHU (Full hook ups which are free and free washer and dryer. So, we get paid to live for free and work at the spring. Now all work camping jobs will not offer everything for free some want you to pay a percentage of the site and give you discounts.

Work camping jobs are all over the USA. The work camping jobs that are located within a state park are not paid and are considered volunteer positions.

Not all jobs except families with kids (but it never hurts to ask) our site was happy that we had children because the managers were the only ones with kids and were excited to have other kids.

Most jobs do have stipulation on your living quarters. They ask that you are fully equipped with everything you need to live inside of your camper as in a toilet, fridge, and along with all the main basics.

The overall experience of work camping is meeting new people either working with you or the people who visit.

We have made so many new friends and connections while work camping. It has definitely been a great experience for all of us and we have visited so many new places and checked out so many springs.

Click the Link below to check out our Instagram post

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsWlhCTNndn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==