HELPING HANDS IN STATE PARKS
Volunteer hosts help with campers' needs and light maintenance in return for an outdoors experience
Joanne Malstrom starts her day like any other. She gets up, gets breakfast for the kids and gets to work.
But for the Malstrom family of Peters, it’s more of a working vacation.
As volunteer campground hosts at Raccoon Creek State Park in Beaver County, their daily responsibilities include marking campsite registrations for the next occupants, disposing of litter, cleaning debris from fire rings and other light maintenance. The Malstroms assist campers with everything from fire building to rainproofing tents to answering campers’ questions. Lots of questions.
“Where’s the playground? Where do we get firewood? Where’s the boat rental? When will someone be at the contact station,” said her husband, Richard Malstrom, counting off common questions on his fingers. “And then the next people pull in a couple days later and ask the same questions. But it’s OK. Most of them are good people, and we usually have the answers.”
“Mostly, we’re here to be good neighbors,” Ms. Malstrom said.
Raccoon Creek is one of 121 public parks managed by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. In 2009 the park system won the National Gold Medal Award for Excellence in Park and Recreation Management presented by the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration and the National Recreation and Park Association. The park system includes some 7,000 campsites and nearly 290 cabins.
At all of the state parks that include campgrounds, live-in camp hosts are recruited to serve as “good neighbors.” Potential hosts are subjected to background checks, and veteran campers with prior campground host experience are favored.
In exchange for all that good neighboring, campsite fees are waived and off-time is built into the schedule.
“Every campground handles it a little differently. We keep it pretty simple here,” said Al Wasilewski, Raccoon Creek State Park manager. “We ask [hosts] to stay a minimum of three weeks and a maximum of six weeks, and we can rotate people in and out.”
Just 25 miles west of Pittsburgh, the park is in demand among potential hosts.
“It’s convenient. Some people move their families here for weeks at a time and drive back to work every day,” Mr. Wasilewski said.
At site F19, marked with a wooden “camp host” sign, 13-year-old Boy Scout Ricky Malstrom quickly built a campfire while his sister Noelle, 5, eagerly pushed marshmallows onto a roasting stick. Their parents set folding chairs beside the fire.
“Ricky can pretty much handle the work that needs to be done, and if campers have problems he knows how to help them,” said his father.
“Even Noelle helps with the firewood and with cleaning up,” said Ms. Malstrom. “We’re raising our kids outdoors and teaching them the value of community service.”
Mr. Wasilewski said DCNR considers the state park volunteer campground host program to be a valuable service in a Pennsylvania outdoor recreation economy that annually generates $29.1 billion in consumer spending and $1.9 billion in state and local tax revenue. A nationwide report released last week by the Outdoor
Industry Association noted that 56 percent of Pennsylvania’s 12.78 million residents participate in outdoor recreation each year.
Unlike many states, Pennsylvania charges no fees for entrance or day use at any of its state parks, and camp site reservations are priced well below the rates at private campgrounds. With airline fees on the rise, vacation visits to state parks have been increasing for a decade.
“We couldn’t afford to do what the camp hosts do,” said Mr. Wasilewski. “The state just doesn’t have the money.”
At Keystone State Park, some 35 miles east of Pittsburghnear New Alexandria in Westmoreland County, Bob and Marjorie Baker are among four campground hosts — two in the hillside campsite ring and two in the lakeside ring. The Bakers of Spring Church, Armstrong County, are retired from jobs at the Apollo Trust Co. For nine consecutive years they’ve parked their RV at Keystone in early May and hosted through mid-September.
“We enjoy the people we work with here,” said Ms. Baker. “Plus my family is from around here, and we get to see them more often.”
For 20 hours per week, Keystone campground hosts assist park staff with light maintenance duties and provide help to campers. The park asks them to work another 20 hours weekly loaning out beach toys and games and selling campground hats and Tshirts at a small shop near the park’s award-winning lake. In 2015, Keystone State Park was ranked No. 5 nationally in the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation’s list of America’s Top 100 Family Fishing and Boating Spots. The park was rated No. 1 in the Northeast based on the quality of fishing, park amenities, proximity to an urban center and other criteria.
“That was a big thing for this park,” said Ms. Baker. “We got a lot of questions about fishing and boat rental that year.”
Visitors to Keystone State Park have traveled from as far away as Australia, she said.
“We like to talk with the families, where they’ve been, what they’ve seen,” said Ms. Baker. “When we’re not working we like to take walks and look at the deer and other wildlife.”
At Raccoon, Ms. Malstrom said being a “people person” is essential to successful campground hosting.
“Sometimes it’s not questions. They want to talk. The women sometimes just want to talk with another woman,” she said. “That’s part of public service, too. Listening. Working as a family to help our campground neighbors has brought our family closer together, and I get to spend more time with my husband. This has been good for our marriage.”
Learn more about DCNR’s camp host program at dcnr.state.pa.us.