Campground Hosting – Farragut State Park – Athol, Idaho – Round 2

We’re back! Yes, we decided to take another go at being campground hosts this summer just like last summer. We love Farragut State Park and thought another stint at hosting would be great. But this time we worked at a different campground and started at the beginning of the season and opened up the campground instead of the end of the season where we closed down the campground. Farragut has 4 campgrounds, Waldron, Gilmore, Snowberry, and Whitetail. We worked at Snowberry last year and this year we were assigned to Gilmore. Both exactly the same and completely different.

Snowberry is a bit further away from the park entrance, has a few hills, lots of pine trees, lots of shade, and water and electric sites. We had one other couple we co-hosted with at Snowberry. Gilmore is closer to the park entrance, very flat, more open to the sun, and full hookups (at least the loop we worked in). Gilmore has 4 loops so there were 4 host couples. Our responsibilities were almost the same but Gilmore had more mowing, weed whacking, and blowing to contend with than Snowberry. Snowberry had many more pinecones!! Pick your poison!

But, just like anything in life, different situations arise so work can change. We realized one night, when we tried to make rounds on our golf cart due to loud screaming after hours, that we did not have a working headlight on our golf cart. We followed the screams using flashlights held out in front of us. It turns out that some campers in a trailer were inside watching a movie and had forgotten to turn off their outside speakers, hence all the screaming!! The flashlights helped us navigate but when my brother and wife were visiting they helped Norm fix the light. Soon we had a headlight. YAY!

Another day we had a Class A departing and when they stopped to empty their trash they stayed parked for a bit. Turns out they were trying to connect to a Zoom meeting but left THEIR outside speakers on. They had quite a bit of trouble connecting to their meeting and just as we went over to notify them that their speakers were on they drove off. I bet they received a few looks as they stopped at signal lights with their meeting being broadcast along the highway!! I guess motorhome manufacturers need some kind of alert light to notify campers that they are blasting movies, music, or Zoom meetings throughout the campground and/or city!!! (ha, ha, ha…)

We cleaned campsites daily for those campers who had checked out which consisted of cleaning fire pits, washing picnic tables, raking gravel on the tent pad, and general cleanup should there be any trash laying around. We also cleaned any chalk off the spur from the kids (or adults) having fun. We even cleaned big rocks that were full of oil chalk markings. Please, campers lets not paint the rocks!! Norm also repaired anything he could or called maintenance if required. In the evenings we sold firewood as needed. We even offered firewood delivery service for campers in need. And, of course, we were available to answer questions about the park and help the campers with any issues or problems with their sites.

We brought along a whiteboard to use at the camphost site to be able to communicate messages to campers such as Off Duty, Fire Ban, etc. AND every day I would include a joke or saying to entertain the campers. When we were off duty I didn’t write one and soon we had lots of complaints from the campers that said they would come by our site just to read the joke of the day. So I then included one every day!!! Anything to bring a smile to the campers’ faces!

Of course, it wasn’t all work, as we had the afternoons off and two days a week to get out and hike the trails, ride our bikes, visit family/friends, and run errands. I covered many of the local activities both inside the park and outside the park in previous posts so I will try not to duplicate that information.

We did have a few storms in the park that brought down trees (luckily no one was hurt) and that made bike riding a bit interesting at times until the maintenance staff could get around the park and get it cleaned up.

During our time at the park the lilacs, wild roses, and ocean spray bloomed,and the local eagles in residence were around raising their young one. We enjoyed our petunias, our hummingbird feeder, and the antics of the local gophers!!

We made our usual journey to our old stomping grounds at Hayden Lake Marina (The Boathouse) where we used to slip our boat and enjoyed a great meal along with fried dill pickles!

We hung out in Bayview (adjacent to the park) and enjoyed meals with family/friends at the Lakehouse Restaurant, pizza at the Iron Pizza in Athol, and also went to the Coeur d’Alene Resort (where we also used to slip our boat) to enjoy more food!! I see a theme here!!

We played disc golf, rode our bikes not only in the park but in the surrounding area, Guess Where.

We enjoyed running around, meeting new people, and having a bit of fun. I tried to take a selfie with my nephew (my brother’s dog) and got the usual eye roll!!! Oh well!!

It was a fabulous time as we worked hard and played hard and met and bonded with lots of new people including other campground hosts, staff, and campers!! We were quite sad to leave but ready for our next adventure.

Farewell!!!