As we are wrapping up our first couple weeks here, we have had our share of fun stuff we have had to address, met more folks and got out a bit more. Without going into gory details, our campground happenings included still cleaning up the aftermath of 4th of July fireworks including sparklers and poppers, even though there are signs everywhere stating fireworks are not allowed in the park. Do you know how hard those little pieces of paper are to pick up with a grabber??? Rick has settled into being the firepit cleaner and I walk the site to pick up trash with my little grabber and grab the tags on the post. Rick loves to drive the gator, so I let him enjoy that task. It is amazing what people throw into the firepit and we recently had a site with mounds of peanut shells all around the firepit. That took some time to clean up and then Rick likes to also rake around the firepit, sometimes making pretty patterns. I think he misses his pattern making when he mowed lawn at the house. We have had some other camper assist issues like loaning out a battery jumper for a dead car battery, keeping an eye out for a lost wedding band, helping a flustered camper who was turned around find her site and a late night missing child search that ended before it began. We even had a site of drunk, singing young men at 3am. Thankfully we were told about that the next morning and not at the time. They did quiet down when another camper mentioned to them that this was quiet time and others were trying to sleep. Knock on wood, we have not had anything worse than that. We also have grateful campers who go out of their way to tell us what a great job we are doing to keep the campground clean and even gourmet smores made for us by a family who Rick helped to repair a bike. We also continue to have plumbing issues throughout the campground. It seems the piping throughout the park is pretty old and is in need of updating which is on the horizon. We met the maintenance person in charge of plumbing that had come by to fix our plugged sinks that we reported when we arrived. Only 4 days, not bad. I was expecting a week or longer. Those issues have seemed to subside, knock on wood. We did hear today at a camp host meeting that there are several improvements coming to the park. Exciting stuff but obviously, they do not happen overnight. As for outings, we got dressed up Tuesday night, the 17th and headed out for my birthday dinner. I am a Beef Wellington fan from way back to my days of bussing tables when I was 15 and I would beg the chef to make me a tiny Wellington on Sat nights after a long night. That usually meant that I would have to devein some shrimp for him, but it was well worth it! We went to the English Inn not far outside the park and dinner was wonderful! We were both soo stuffed walking out and promised that we cannot eat like that again for some time!!! It was a splurge since it was a birthday dinner. We are trying to limit our dining out to cheaper breakfasts or lunches, or not at all! We are really trying to get within a budget that we developed from looking at many other full-timers. We will see how July shapes up and we will share that on this blog as I know there are other full time dreamers that would benefit from the information, just like we did. Plus it keeps us accountable! Our other evening out was to see one of the musicals here at the Northern Theatre in the park. I mentioned in the previous post that we received complimentary tickets for all 3 shows. The first show we went to was Dairy Heirs. A funny, heartwarming musical about life on a farm in WI and coming back home. It was a beautiful evening in an intimate setting and the cast was very talented! After the show we grabbed a pizza and salad at Wild Tomato, which is a Door County favorite, right outside the park. OK, I just realized we have not taken pictures of any of this awesome food. Wow, that is not like us! We will try to rectify that in future posts. We have also had some visitors. Rick’s Army buddy from Germany, who lives north of Green Bay, stopped over with his wife for a delicious dinner creation that Rick just whipped up off the cuff. We then topped if off with a yummy cherry pie, baked with fresh Door County cherries. The next day friends of ours from home stopped by to say HI and see our new home and where we were working. It was good to catch up! We also have some others stopping by in August and topping our time off here in Door County with a big family camp out. Looking forward to it! By far the majority of our camper interaction has been with folks who are curious about our camp host position, our RV and our new lifestyle. We spend quite a bit of time answering questions from other campers about what our plans are, where we are planning to go and how the heck we can do this soo young. Some really entertaining conversations. One of the things we have had to solution for is the dumping of the tanks on the RV. Unfortunately, the host sites only have electric, so we needed to figure out how we would refill the fresh tank and dump the gray and black tanks. For us to pack up the RV and take it down to the dump station would be quite the undertaking, and that would also mean we would have to repark it. NOT! We talked with other camp hosts and they gave us some suggestions on what they do. For filling the fresh water tank, we were able to stretch all of our hoses, 85 ft worth, to the bath house clean up sink. Good deal. Now the crappy part…LOL. To dump the tanks, we have a man hole/sewer cover over by the bath house and Rick would fill up our lucy lu dump dolly and roll it over there and then dump. We picked midday to do this as that is when most of the campers are out and about. The black tank and one gray tank went well but the last gray tank proved to be our first big RV issue. The gray tank gate valve pull, which is a cable, would not release. Rick tried spraying WD-40, pulled off the back access panel to make sure the cable wasn’t binding anywhere, which it wasn’t. He then checked the manuals for info, called and left a message for a contact at the manufacturer, Grand Design. He then went to the Grand Design facebook groups and posted the issue, wondering if others had the issue and how they solved it. One suggestion was to spray PB Blaster, a penetrating oil, on the valve assembly by the pull handle. Rick then let that soak with a ziploc bag over the top. A tech from the manufacturer then called back and confirmed that what he was doing is what a repair tech would do. After a couple hours Rick went back to it and tried to release, hit it with a hammer, which didn’t release and then took two wrenches and twisted and it finally came loose. He then cleaned it off thoroughly and lubed all three valves and after all of that, a lesson learned that lubing the cables will be on the monthly list of maintenance things to do. Amazing how rusty it had gotten after only two weeks! Overall this campground host position has been a wonderful first workamping experience. The campers have been very friendly, it is a quiet and peaceful campground and the weather has been beautiful! We could certainly get used to this! Enjoy some pictures of the park. SHOP AMAZON HERE
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We headed north Thursday to our first workamping experience. We left our moochdocking spot at my Dad's and headed 3 hours north to Peninsula State Park-Welckers campground. The journey was uneventful, except for a little rain, and we pulled in around 3pm. This state park is located in Door County, which swells with tourists in the summer from all over the world, but mostly from IL. LOL Fellow cheeseheads will get that reference! Peninsula State Park is one of the states largest and busiest state parks with over 3700 acres, with about ¾ undeveloped. It has really everything within the park. There are 5 different campgrounds, a full golf course and restaurant, a lighthouse to tour, a beach complete with store and all sorts of water rentals, lots of trails and a wonderful outdoor playhouse in the summer that has some great comedy musicals. When we arrived we checked in at the office and found that our contact had gone home sick. We met one of the rangers who gave us a bunch of keys, a Rubbermaid bin and manuals and said everything we need is in the bin and at the site, including the Gator that we are able to use for our duties. They were very nice to call one of the other seasoned hosts to come over to our site to answer any questions. I have to say, I was a bit nervous about being handed the materials and being let loose to figure it out. The questions were mounting as we drove to our site. Most of the park is wooded, as is our campground, Welcker's Point. I was nervous about getting down the roads with our tall, 42 ft 5th wheel, hoping we would not be scrapping too much on trees aside or above us. We did pretty good with just a brush of leaves here and there. Our site is quite wide and Rick was able to wiggle the 5th wheel in to fit lengthwise. Being the hosts, we do get a larger site and electric. Unfortunately, most WI state parks are set up the same way, with only electric. The good thing is, in talking to other hosts, we can get additional water from the water fountain in front of the bath house next to us and use our little wheely dump tank and dump in the man hole near the bathrooms. Not ideal, but we will make it work. Being next to the bath house helps in that we can use the showers and bathrooms there most of the time. Our campground consists of 81 non-electric sites in a large loop with another cutting through the middle and a small loop of 7 sites off to the side. We have 3 bath houses, one of which does not have showers. Dumpsters are at the entrance road to our campground. We also have responsibility for Welcker’s Point, the small day use area across the main road from our campground. What are our duties as camp hosts you ask??? Well that was sort of vague but we knew we had to check sites after campers left, making sure to empty trash and ash from the firepits and check sites for trash and take down the departure day tags. Ok cool, we got that. We do have a cleaning crew that comes through daily, in years past it used to be twice a day. They clean the bathrooms and stock them. We then check them periodically to make sure there is no issues and they have TP. After that it gets a bit fuzzy. In talking with a couple other hosts that have been here for years, it is very loosely managed. There is no micro-managing of campground hosts. We had another camp host come over and took us to show us where the maintenance shop is, supplies, where to gas up the gator, etc. You can imagine we had a ton of questions for him. He has been a campground host for over twenty years and was a wealth of knowledge. He introduced us to the lead maintenance man and gave us pointers as to how to write up maintenance tickets, etc. We also have responsibility for the day use area and our guess is that we check for trash there and empty the grills. We also set up a charging station at our site on the extra picnic table we have. That has become very popular and our campers, young and old appreciate the ability to charge phones, ipads and batteries. After that, we are just learning as we go as to what other “duties” are. SO far, we have checked some sites for the office when they called, helped campers with directions, posted the daily weather forecast on our information board, trimmed a branch for a camper concerned about it brushing his camper when he left and answering A LOT of questions about our RV and our full-time lifestyle. There has also been a change in who enforces and monitors the park. In years past it was the park rangers, this year it is the DNR wardens. We get the distinct feeling that some folks, including other hosts are still getting used to that idea and have not quite warmed up to it yet. We were given a flip phone with pre-programmed numbers for us to call, such as the office, multiple people’s names…not sure who they are or what they do and the rangers. Umm, no Wardens! So what happens if we need them??? We were fortunate to have the supervising warden on duty our second day and he was very nice and answered some questions for us and came back with a print out of the wardens schedules and all their phone numbers. I then promptly programmed them in to our phone. Scary thought was that we are not the first hosts this year using that phone and who would have had to contact a warden. Once we had the 5th wheel set up, we got our first host issue. We didn’t even have a chance to read all the manuals we were given. Geeesh. One of the three bath houses had both sinks in the women’s bathroom plugged and overflowing with water still running. We knew we needed to wear our safety vests when riding on the gator, so we grabbed those, found the gator key and drove down to see what we were dealing with. By the time we arrived, the water had stopped running and both sinks were full. Now what do we do??? Well that is up to you, there is no clear direction in all those manuals. We were told by another host to just use common sense. Ok then. Rick tried to take saran wrap and unplug them but that did not work. Most of the water on the floor had gone down the floor drain and there were no puddles. We then hung an out of order sign on that bathroom and locked the door. Getting back to the site we filled out a maintenance ticket we found in the bin with the manuals and looked through the manuals for what to do next. Do we call maintenance on a Thursday night? Do we call the office? Do we wait until the next day and give it to someone? How fast do they come out to fix it? Are we supposed to do more to fix it? All great questions with no answers in any of the manuals or bins. We decided to wait until the morning until the seasoned host was coming over to show us around. We had the bathroom out of order and locked so the issue couldn’t get worse, however it was an inconvenience to the campers on that end of the park. We still do not know how long it should take before something gets addressed from a ticket we write up, because there are some tickets already in and some other showers and toilets out of order. When we asked another host, he just said, it is not real speedy. I guess we will see. This is certainly a departure from our corporate lives where there were step by step action plans and set expectations. I have read from other full-timers blogs that this is an adjustment that will take time. I do however want to mention to the office staff who we have been communicating with prior to starting, that it would really be helpful for a new host to have some sort of “A day in the life of…” or one document that gives you and idea of what your daily duties would be and some examples of other tasks that could pop up AND what the maintenance ticket process should look like. I don’t think this has been too much of an issue with many of the folks being return hosts but it sure would help us newbies out! Ok, thanks for letting me rant for a minute. Don’t get me wrong, we like camp hosting and talking with folks. We even had one camper stop by while we were emptying trash and chat for just over an hour! Campers love the park and are happy to see a friendly face to answer questions and just say “Hi.” We love toddling around on the gator, checking sites, writing down the site #’s of those that will be leaving in the next day or two so we know how busy we will be on a given day. That really helps us to plan our personal stuff and sightseeing. So far we have only gotten out to do some laundry, visit a winery and orchard for some much needed “supplies”, visit the little local grocery store and a quick breakfast to use their wifi. That brings up another issue we ran into…cell and internet. Being the campground that is the furthest out from the entrance and the rest of the village of Fish Creek, our cell and internet is pretty much non-existent. Our Verizon phones may get 1 bar of 4G intermittently but my AT&T phone is non-existent. We recently switched to a unlimited plan for the AT&T phone and also received free TV (think mini-Directv Now plan) that did not count against our data or hotspot. Well, so much for using that while we are here. We did find out that if we go down to the concession store at the beach, they do have wifi, albeit a bit weak and VERY popular. We are managing and it has given us a bit of a break from being contantly “on”. Apologies to everyone if these posts are a bit further apart, but it is difficult to get down to the beach and we are a bit gun-shy after our first trip down to read a couple emails and check FB. We took a ride down on the gator and had our camp host vests on while we sat outside the store checking our phones. After about 10 minutes an older gentleman wandered over and began to tell us about how long he has been coming to this park and everything he felt was wrong with it, what is not working and just general complaining…over and over and over again. We listened, painfully and throughout the discussion we mentioned that the park really wanted visitor feedback and suggested he fill out one of the suggestion cards, saying that if they didn’t know about his concerns, they wouldn’t have a chance to address them. Little did we know, and we were told later by other camp hosts that he is very well known and this is his usual MO. They also mentioned that him and his wife go through all of the campgrounds looking at the campsites and complain when the camphosts take any wood left behind. We think they are looking for leftovers for themselves and sure enough, we saw his wife in sites at a campground they are not staying in. It certainly takes all kinds. I would say they are the exception and not the rule, as most campers are very friendly. Since that encounter we have not had a chance to get back to the beach for some wifi and we are very keen to watch for places that offer free wifi, like the cute little restaurant outside the park entrance, Julie’s Café, that offers it. We have already visited them for a breakfast to take advantage of that little luxury. As for TV, we have been fortunate to get several local channels, although at times they fade in and out. I also mentioned that they have a wonderful theater with 3 different shows during the summer season that are very popular throughout Door County. It is an open air theater and all shows are at night, under the stars. We have been to Peninsula State Park several times and unfortunately have never been to a show. However, yesterday, the marketing director for the theater stopped by to introduce herself and provide promotional materials to hand out to the campers. She also provided us with complimentary tickets to each of the three shows and then gave us a couple more for our visitors that will join us later in August. What a pleasant surprise!!! So overall, we really like being here and look forward to getting a routine going so that we can plan some outings and our routine trips to the grocery store and laundromat. More to come on our adventures here and how we manage some of our creature comforts that we have come to really appreciate here, like wifi, showers and empty RV tanks. SHOP AMAZON HERE
We participate in the Amazon affiliate program and we appreciate you using our Amazon link above to make your Amazon purchases. It does not cost you anything additional and helps us to support our blog. You can even save our link as a favorite and use that whenever you need to make an Amazon purchase. Thank you!!! Have you heard of side hustles or gigs?? In this day and age of rapidly expanding technology, the gig economy is the fastest growing job segment. Basically, these are different ways to make some extra money or make a part time living with many of these opportunities being short term job opportunities. You are basically working for yourself with the freedom to do what you want, when you want. The list of these contract or freelance type opportunities are endless! It could be anything from web developer, translator, social media host to on demand jobs like UBER driver, personal shopper, auto inspector, virtual test juror, mystery shopper to app based activities. As we get closer and closer to taking this show on the road, I started to think about how we could make additional side money to fund this journey. In fact, I started thinking about this before I even retired from my full time job last June. That is when I stumbled on the intriguing idea of side hustles. I cannot tell you how exciting and flexible I have found gig jobs to be! You could certainly make a full time job of this, but I am looking to just do this part time. We also want to explore some of the "traditional" type of full time RV'er work camping jobs and these side hustles will allow us to do both! So for those family and friends who are not full time RV'ers, you will find that you too can benefit from this article. In this post I am going to focus on those that I have personally done or researched at length and plan to do. If I did not narrow it down, this post could turn into a book! I am going to group these into categories: on demand jobs, mystery shopping, app based activities. On Demand JobsThe picture above only captures a small portion of what is available out there for on demand jobs and they are growing by the day. Below are some that I have personally signed up for. SHIPT This is the one that started it all for me. On Demand Grocery Delivery. I cannot tell you how much I love this and how wonderful this company is! SHIPT is all over the US, partnering with many different grocery stores and now is expanding into Target stores, Costco and liquor stores. SHIPT was recently acquired by Target which will allow them to scale quicker and allow Target to get into the delivery service to compete with Walmart and Amazon. As a shopper, I make my own schedule, down to the hour, and can take off for any amount of time without having to get it ok'd by the boss. Awesome, huh? Plus, this gig is totally portable since SHIPT is all over the US. As we travel to new locations, I can go into the app and change my metro location and start shopping. It is just that easy! As a shopper, I go into the app and put myself on the schedule for any amount of time I want that day, by hour increments. Shoppers then place orders online and choose a time to have their groceries delivered. You shop the order with the app and check out with a SHIPT funded credit card and then deliver the order to the customer. For those looking for a job that will offer those feel good moments and a sense of helping the community, imagine delivering to an elderly, wheelchair bound customer, who is unable to shop for themselves or a new mom with a colicky baby who ran out of diapers and you come in to save the day. Pretty cool! The pay for this can be pretty good as tips are appreciated and accepted in cash or on the app. It is not unheard of to make up to $25 an hour, but know that it is on demand, so it is dependent on customer demand as are most all of these jobs. For more information, follow this link. Also, you can enter my referral code (referral code: 33323) on the application and I will get a couple bucks. Appreciate it!! If you do decide to sign up to be a shopper, you also are a customer and get deliveries yourself without paying the annual fee. However, if you think this would be a great option for you to get your groceries delivered, follow this link and you will get a discount on your first order. WE GO LOOK This and the next gig are two that are on demand "Lookers" if you will. Think of it as someone, such as an insurance company or potential buyer, wanting to see a vehicle or property. They would contact one of these third party companies and they would dispatch one of their Lookers to go out and take app based pictures. The app is so easy that it is hard to screw it up. You can accept or decline the requests as your schedule dictates. You can also change your location so they keep up with your travels. You are paid via direct deposit in a couple weeks. Check it out here. ONSOURCE This is another "Looker" type gig. Similar to We Go Look, you use an app to capture pictures. You also get paid via Direct Deposit. Check it out here. The differences between these two? I would say I get more offers through We Go Look and they are pushed out via an app alert whereas Onsource calls you. Onsource pays a bit better and the pay is usually in my account in a week, where We Go Look is there in about 2 weeks. Appen **12/11/2018- I am now also working for Appen, which is a great work from home type job that you can do anywhere. I am currently a Social Media Content Reviewer and am enjoying the flexibility this job provides. Here is my referral link to hopefully get you in the door quicker rather than having to go through FlexJobs. https://connect.appen.com/qrp/public/jobs/list?uref=453f0159695377e8cc6a122874ae37d7 Roadie This is a delivery service and could be local or if you are traveling, you can make some money taking something along and delivering to another city or state. Postmates Their Fleet app lets you deliver food delivery from restaurants and stores. Shiftgig This app is more of a way to find some short term work such as picking up a catering shift or working at a special event like a concert. Once you sign up, you are able to search the app for available gigs. TaskRabbit This is an app that allows you to search for tasks. Things like, moving furniture for someone, yard work, personal assistant or helping with other projects. Mystery Shops/App based company & product reviews
Mystery shopper/app based review type gigs are unbelievably abundant! This includes observing everything and anything. It could be anything from making a call to a university to review their customer service capabilities to reviewing the cleanliness and customer service of a restaurant, oil change shop or Walmart to conducting a mystery shop on apartment sales staff or window sales people. The great thing about these are that you are reimbursed for purchases or services. For instance, I rated a carpet cleaning business and got paid for my review and received $225 worth of free carpet cleaning. I also have received many free meals for rating restaurants service and cleanliness. I have done movie trailer checks to record movie goers response to the trailers shown before a movie. I also got paid for putting coupons on spaghetti jars and taking a picture of my work, which took me all of 10 minutes to do. Plus you choose which ones you want to do, when you want to do them. One word of caution, you must follow directions for each shop. You will be financially penalized or even perhaps not paid for a shop if you do not follow directions. It happened to me once and that is all it took! Newbie mistake! I now make sure to read the directions very carefully and make sure I get all the requirements. Here is a list of those apps that I actively use with links for you to sign up for: MarketSource There are two divisions of this company. One is the mystery shopper component and the movie theater component. You will need to sign up for each separately. Presto InstaShops Some of these are quick ones were you take a couple pictures and you submit. They also have others that are more involved. Secret Shopper This company has a variety of shops from evaluating YMCA tours to cable company customer service reviews. They list them by city or by map location. IPSOS Mystery Shopping This group does alot of mystery shops for the postal service, which means you get reimbursed for sending packages and get paid. WIN!! Gigwalk This is one of those apps you can check and do shops on the fly. Not alot of preparation necessary and you can pick these up and do them when you are out and about. MaritzCX This company does alot of gas station audits. I have done several of these lately as they pay pretty good and once you get the flow down of what a brand (i.e. Mobil, Shell) is looking for, it gets pretty easy to get the evaluation done quickly. Field Agent If you want to just get a feel for the review process with some quick shops, this is the one of the apps I would recommend to start with. They are on the fly gigs but do have a 2 hour completion time frame from the time from the time you accept the shop. If you shop Target and Walmart, this is the gig for you! Survey.com This company offers a wide range of gigs such as standard mystery shops, merchandise resets, product demos, stock products or promotional displays. I am currently doing a gig for them where I stick some coupons on a product. This is another great one to earn some big money for some of these gigs! iSecretShop This company has gigs anywhere from mystery phone shop, web evaluations, to checking out certain fitness programs, hardware store and restaurants. EasyShift Just as the name suggests, this is another one that is a quick grab and go mystery shop app. Easy quick shops. GigSpot This group has a wide variety of mystery shops. I have done several phone shops for them as well as an in home window replacement mystery shop. They have several groups underneath them that they organize mystery shops for so there is always a wide variety of gigs. JobSpotter Finally, these last two are a bit different than the others. This gig is actually run by Indeed, the online job board. Everyone has seen local businesses hiring for help these days. This gig would be to take a picture of the help wanted sign and upload the picture on the app. This activity earns you wallet points to purchase gift cards. eJury This is an interesting concept of having virtual jurors to prepare for trial. I am signed up but have yet to get a virtual assignment. It just goes to show, you could do just about anything virtually! Again, these are the gigs that I personally signed up for. A couple reminders ... these are 1099 jobs so you do not get a W-2 for so if you plan on making a full time job out of these, you may want to look into the tax planning portion. You also need to make sure you pay attention to detail and instructions. Most all of these rate their shoppers and better ratings mean more shops! These gigs are plentiful and completely flexible, so why not get started and dabble in some today! They are fun and fit any lifestyle! Who couldn't use a couple more bucks in their wallet! |
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