So, You Want to be a Workamper?

By John and Kathy Huggins

Have you ever asked yourself how you can finance the RV lifestyle? Most of us have. If you’re thinking or dreaming about becoming a full-time or part-time RVer, and you must work to make it happen, then this is the book for you. In it you will find what we’ve learned (often the hard way) in over eight years of workamping while full-time RVing. We provide many tested links to the websites of those businesses that hire workampers and volunteers. The advice we offer is based on our own experience. We take you from doing the initial homework, to choosing the right job type for you, to the writing a workamper resume, to the interview, and way beyond. We discuss what other considerations there may be such as taxes and home domicile. We wind it up with a chapter on our most memorable lessons learned. We have had many experiences working on the road, most have been good, but some not so much. This book would also make a great gift for a would-be workamper or for folks who wonder why we do this.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John and Kathy Huggins
• Release date: Aug 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781533707147

John and Kathy Huggins

Kathy and I are really just plain folks like you, but we live in a 40-foot RV instead of a house. We started dreaming in earnest in 2003, a year before my job was outsourced. We went to shows and visited dealerships just to see if we could really do this. We could. We took the plunge two years later after we sold our house in Florida and bought “The Dream Machine”, our 2004 Fleetwood Expedition diesel motor home. Since then we have travelled through the states we used to fly over and discovered a unique and awesomely beautiful land that pictures do not give justice to. We have been volunteers, workampers, podcasters, and now authors. I hope you enjoy our book; and if you see us on the road, honk and wave.

Book preview

Foreword

This book is and will be a work in progress. We have put down as much of our experience and knowledge as we can remember and research, but there is so much about workamping to tell. We wrote the most about the things we know and have experienced. We have said many times, We are not experts, but we are experienced.

We want to especially thank the loyal listeners of our podcast, Living the RV Dream. You convinced us to write So, You Want To Be An RVer? At that time, writing a book was the farthest thing from our minds. Now we have this, our second book published and another in the works. We are still working and travelling as well as keeping up a weekly one hour radio show, so number three may take a while.

We want to thank our son Steve who first asked us to do an RV radio show. To LeAnna Bing and Mark Estep, managers at Butterfield RV Resort and Observatory, a big thank you for help in seeing workamping from the manager's viewpoint. To Jim Bathurst, author of Cat on a leash for proofreading both our books. To our daughter in law Dr. Shelley Huggins who helped with proofreading, thank you for taking time away from our grandchildren to do this for us. We give a special thank you to Nick and Terry Russell. Nick is the author and editor of The Gypsy Journal and bestselling author of the Big Lake series of books. Nick, you gave us the encouragement to do the first project and shared your knowledge of e-publishing. You also took time out of your busy schedule to be one of our proofreaders.

And to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ goes all the glory.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. What is Workamping?

Chapter 2. Will workamping fit your lifestyle?

Chapter 4. What kind of paying jobs are there?

Chapter 5. What kinds of volunteer jobs are there?

Chapter 6. How do I find Workamping jobs?

Chapter 7. How do I write a workamper resume?

Chapter 8. What about the interview?

Chapter 9. How do you figure out The Deal?

Chapter 10. What is a Letter of Understanding?

Chapter 11. What about taxes and other legal considerations?

Chapter 12. Some of our Lessons Learned while workamping

Appendix I Links

Appendix II. State Personal Income Tax Laws

Appendix III Glossary

Chapter 1. What is Workamping?

To quote from the home page of Workamper News, Workampers are adventurous individuals, couples and families who have chosen a wonderful lifestyle that combines any kind of part-time or full-time work with RV camping. If you work as an employee, operate a business, or donate your time as a volunteer, and you sleep in an RV (or on-site housing), you are a Workamper! We're not just talking a few thousand jobs either. There are literally hundreds of thousands of paying jobs and volunteer opportunities that can be considered as workamping.

Workamping can take many forms. Most common is campground work, otherwise known as the Outdoor Hospitality Industry. These can be any number of jobs including office and reservations, maintenance and grounds, security, housekeeping, activities, and many other things that go into running a campground. Besides privately owned campgrounds, there are membership parks, public campground systems like KOA, as well as many other campgrounds such as local, state, and national park campgrounds, along with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project campgrounds and even National Forrest campgrounds. Outside of campgrounds, the sky is the limit as to what kinds of work is available. We will cover that in depth later on in this book.

You will not get rich workamping, and you most likely will not find a career doing this work, but it is honest work that needs to be done. You can supplement other income streams with workamping to stretch your camping budget. Many folks do volunteer work in many different venues where they receive a campsite or other lodging in exchange for work hours.

We find that workamping affords us the opportunity to move to an area of the country we want to explore and stay for an extended time. In our non-working  hours and days, we discover things in an area we would never see in a week or even a two week stay. We actually become a part of the local community. We discover places that only the locals know about.

Kathy and I have quite a bit of experience workamping as well as a few volunteer positions. Our first year on the road was in 2005, and we didn't even know much about workamping. We were in a beautiful campground in Rapid City, SD and towards the end of our two week stay; we came across an advertisement on the park's closed circuit TV channel asking for part time workers to finish out the summer. Well how cool was this?? We worked a little and had lots of free time. We enjoyed it so much we returned for three out of the next four summers to work there. Eventually we were working 40 hours each per week and we were paid for all of the hours we worked! Since then we have worked in campgrounds in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona, and Florida as well as volunteer stints in Texas. We don't claim to be experts on workamping, but we do have a wealth of experience and we are happy to share it with you.

Chapter 2. Will workamping fit your lifestyle?

When we started RVing, we didn't even know what our lifestyle was going to be. We had both left the workforce and we weren't seeking any kind of employment. We were out to have fun! About six months into our full-time journey, we found ourselves in the most beautiful campground we had ever seen. Near our departure time, we saw an advertisement on the park TV channel for people to maintain one of the numerous Comfort Stations in the campground.