'We're on wheels, and they roll'
Steve Anderson, who publishes the Workamper News, says only about 60% of workamper jobs are at campgrounds. State and national parks, hotels, Christmas tree lots and amusement parks are all sites for seasonal workers and their RVs. Some are straight trades for space rent, with the option for additional hourly work, usually at minimum wage. Other jobs pay fairly well; Anderson knows of people who work less than three months to earn a year's living expenses.Jobs that are not at campgrounds may provide full hookups on the premises or negotiate discounts at nearby sites. Amazon.com set up a free RV site near its Coffeyville, Kan., distribution center to lure extra employees for the holiday rush. An Iowa amusement park called Adventureland pays bonuses to workers who stay for the entire season; this bonus brings the cost of five months of camping to just $112 for single RVers or $12 per couple.
Bob Duncan was laid off from a telecommunications position almost eight years ago. The job market in Ohio wasn't bristling with opportunities for a 58-year-old man accustomed to earning an excellent salary. Duncan bought an RV and headed west.
His first workamping job was at a private shooting range in California. He got all his utilities free plus a small salary that increased when he took over as manager. Duncan has had a number of other jobs, but he hit pay dirt at the Amazon site in Coffeyville, where he used his experience in network planning to bump himself up from packing presents. This fall he'll return for his third season as a data processing manager, which carries a decent (if temporary) salary.
Temporary is fine with most workampers, he says. "Sometimes you decide you don't want to be there anymore. We're on wheels, and they roll."
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'Very mobile people'
For the past five years, Lee Bohlman and her husband have workamped at a fish hatchery, at an Oregon lighthouse and at county, state and national parks. They've also visited their kids in California and Wisconsin."We are really very mobile people," says Bohlman, 66. They sold their home four years ago and have never looked back: "No house, no mortgage, no pets, no worries."
Bohlman and others recommend against buying a brand-new RV because, like cars, they depreciate the instant you drive them away. Another common piece of advice was to buy a towable fifth-wheel trailer instead of a motor home, because it's easier to drive to the grocery store in a pickup than a land yacht.
"I get between 8 and 10 (miles per gallon) when we're towing," notes workamper Dan Miller. "But we only do it twice a year." He and his wife, both in their 50s, are currently parked at a Holiday Inn in Wyoming, where they get a free site plus an hourly wage for working the front desk.
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Some people combine workamping with caretaking by parking RVs on the property of the homes they're tending. Coleen Sykora, who publishes a Web site called Workers on Wheels, has lived on an Alabama ranch, in a lakefront Minnesota cabin and in a beautiful city home in Anchorage, Alaska.
How to get these jobs
Anyone who's ever housesat knows that word of mouth is a good way to get a job over a holiday weekend or a month in the summer. Long-term positions tend to be advertised.Christina Parrish, 21, answered a Craigslist ad about work on a 5-acre horse ranch in Oregon's Willamette Valley. For two days' worth of chores each week she scored a two-bedroom apartment plus the chance to ride for free. More importantly, it reduced her living expenses at a time when her hours had been cut at work.
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A number of Web sites offer caretaking, housesitting and workamping jobs, but many are relatively new and, like any Internet site, may disappear without warning -- along with your subscription fee. It's up to you to decide if that risk is worthwhile.
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The Caretaker Gazette has been around for 27 years, Workamper News for 21 and Workers on Wheels for 15. The first two supplement their regular publications with daily or weekly job updates, and the third offers a free e-zine.
Those updates often feature last-minute jobs that are available because an employee was fired or quit without warning. Nancy Welch and her husband are currently at a lakefront home in Texas because the original caretakers didn't like the hot weather.
It worked out well because the Welches had just lost a five-week job due to a health emergency in the homeowner's family. "All of a sudden we had no place to live" -- a potential problem for the professional housesitter. It's vital to scope out couches you can surf in between jobs or when jobs fall through.
Welch is 68, and her husband is nearly 78; they've been married five years. "Like many retirees, we cannot afford to retire," she says. But she finds moving from house to house "a fun way to live."
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