Saylorville Lake – Cloudy – 84 Degrees
People ask us all the time why we chose to work camp. We work for our site about 10 months out of the year. The other two months we find a nice RV Park and hang out and relax and socialize. There we run into full-time RV’ers who do all kinds of things. Some are retired and are on a perpetual vacation, others are snow birds who still own property elsewhere where they take the RV during the summer, we have met families who home school the kids on the road and contractors who work from their RV’s in a staggering variety of vocations. The reason for us to work camp is multi-faceted.
Most importantly it is economical. I ‘retired’ at the ripe old age of 51 when we hit the road. That posed a number of financial challenges namely health insurance for me and the reality that I am not eligible to contribute to an IRA now since I have no earned income. Essentially, I walked away from 15 or so years of retirement contributions to live my dream. I am working part-time this summer so will be able to make a partial contribution, but this summer is unusual. Work camping makes this life much more affordable and comfortable on Champs retirement income which keeps us comfortable.
The second thing we talked about when we started imagining this lifestyle is work camping as a way to stay in shape, active, and engaged each day. We are both healthy and work hard to maintain our health. Neither one of us can conceive of sitting in the lawn chair yet. Hopefully we’ll be about 98 years old before those days come.
With those two notions in mind we set out getting volunteer gigs in areas we want to spend time. As we have worked different areas we are realizing other benefits of the work camping lifestyle.
We have done some really cool things! One common theme amongst workcampers who work in wildlife areas is all the neat, hands on things they get to be a part of along side the biologists, and naturalists. My friend got to help release sea turtles that had been rescued from the cold Texas coast waters last year. I got to net and catch birds for banding one year. We leave a little mark on the places we go. A visitor’s center display here, a welcome kiosk there. Champ’s efforts helping plant over 3500 prairie plugs this summer will be visible in the form of vast fields of wild flowers here at Saylorville for years to come. My friend Judy is the driving force behind the beautiful butterfly gardens that grace Saylorville. There is a deep satisfaction in giving your talents and muscle to make a public place more beautiful or accessible.
The other unexpected reward is the depth of knowledge we gain by working behind the scenes and interpreting the park we are working in to the visitors. I have been a voracious learner and researcher since I was a child. This lifestyle is quite simply a dream come true on that level.
Like most new things, you imagine how it will be, then if you are 100% in you get so much more than you expected. Like any way of life, you get what you put in. In this case we are getting it back several times over.
Until tomorrow…
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