Tales of a Volunteer Campground Host
I have four days remaining in one of the fastest months of my life. This is the month I spent as a volunteer campground host for the state of Wisconsin at The Kettle Moraine State Forest Pike Lake Unit. I can hardly believe the time is almost gone, and a whole month has passed. I began this post on May 30th and July 1st seemed like it was so far away. I had many plans for things to do during the month, like paths to explore, swimming, and just sitting back to read and write. To date I have been swimming once, I did find some new paths but not as many as I had planned and my reading, writing quotas are about the same as if I were at home. Where did the time go?
First let me tell you a little about the park and the job of a volunteer host. Pike lake is exactly 22.4 miles from our home’s driveway to the host’s campsite. It is situated in the Northern Kettle Moraine and named after a pretty spring fed lake, Pike Lake. The Kettle Moraine is an area created by the glaciers tens of thousands of years ago. As the glaciers receded and the ice melted kettles, moraines, and kames were formed. The kettles are deep depressions some remain as lakes like Pike Lake. The Moraines are rolling hills and the kames are abrupt hills. Inside the park is Powder Hill, a kame, and the second highest point in SE Wisconsin. On top of Powderhill is an observation deck with spectacular views of the surrounding area.
There are several miles of hiking paths within the park boundaries. These hiking paths include an astronomy trail which takes the hiker on a walk through the solar system. Along this path are signs set up at measured intervals to correspond with the distance you would be between each planet and the sun. At the beginning of the trail you can pick up a list of questions to answer during the half mile walk. Then there is the self guided Black Forest Nature Trail which passes through prairie, wet lands, and forest. Along this path the hiker will find informative signs explaining the forest and plant life. The trail to the observation tower takes you through some beautiful maple and oak forest. The keen observer will notice the stone fence lines established by the early settlers more than one hundred years ago. Then there is a segment of the Ice Age Trail which crosses the park. The Ice Age trail is a multi-state trail patterned after the likes of the Appalachia Trail. Upon its completion it will follow the moraine escarpment through three states. The scenery throughout the park is spectacular and the paths are well maintained. Down by the lake is a well-kept beach and picnic area complete with a playground for the kids. You will also find a wheel chair accessible trail along the lake front. Pike Lake State Park is an oasis within the city sprawl. This park is a gem and remains one of our favorites.
We started camping at Pike Lake several years ago and last year I was made aware that there would be several openings for a camp host this summer. I put in my application and was chosen. The camp host position is for one month. During that month you get a campsite with electricity free. In exchange for this there are a few duties you need to perform. First, you are the campground host. You need to be accessible to the other campers to welcome them, answer their questions and help with problems that may arise. You may ask what kind of problems can pop up? Here are just a few. There was one young couple who just bought their tent and did not have a clue as to how to set up a tent, I was happy to assist. I handed out chunks of firestarter for the many who like the two women who also had just started camping could not get their camp fire started. Then there’s the people who left their car door open, dome light on, a cell phone connected, etc. and ran down their car batteries and needed a start. There was one couple with a new trailer and another with a pop up who had yet to learn how to back up and needed a little assistance getting into their site. People had numerous questions about the park but the most common was: where do we buy firewood? During my one month at this park the thirty-two campsites must have burned a forest or two at their camp fires. I sent so many people to the white house about a mile east of the park entrance that they should offer me a commission.
My other job was to clean up the sites after the people left. This included cleaning out the ash from the fire pits and picking up any litter which may be on the ground. To do this job I was given an electric golf cart, buckets, water jugs, a shovel, and rake. Then there was the long-handled gripper to pick up the things we don’t want to mention but more about those later. You might have guessed that the fire pits all contained a fair amount of ash which is true; however, there was hardly any litter to be found. This is a small campground by comparison to others in the state with only thirty-two sites so my cleaning duties were not taxing. The final duty was to put up the reservation tags each day. The ranger would stop at my site each morning and give me a list of who was registered in the park and give me a stack of purple tags. I would then take these purple tags and place them on the corresponding pole next to the camp site to show they were reserved on a certain date. This task required knowing the numbers and matching them correctly. I dealt with the stress and to my knowledge got them all put on correctly.
The stick on the grill. Pike Lake is basically a weekend park with campers coming from the Milwaukee area. On Sunday afternoon it clears out, in fact I was alone a few days during the beginning of the month. Some of the people would remove their blue "occupied" tags from the pole when they checked out and some would leave it on the pole. I needed a way to know which site had been cleaned and which had not. I began putting a stick over the top of the cooking grate after I finished cleaning a site. This also helped me to know if someone else was in the site during the week and possibly used the grill for a picnic. I was able to drive around in the electric cart or walk with Cromwell my dog and look for the stick on the grill and know the site was clean. You may have heard the adage "leave it as you found it?" This was true for the stick on the grill as well. Over 50% of the sites left the same stick on the cooking grate after they cleaned up their site. That’s just the way things are in this park, nice friendly campers who cared about the park and each other.
The majority of campers were families, next were young couples who had a few days off in the middle of the week. We had a honeymooner couple whom I never saw come out of their tent and single people who just came up to escape the city hustle and bustle for a few nights. There was Roger the contractor who slept in his truck with his feet hanging out the front window. He used the park to save the gas cost driving to Milwaukee while he worked in Hartford. An occasional vacationer would find their way here but it was unusual to see an out of state licence plate. By the way Illinois is an in-state plate. The people who use this park were friendly and respected the park’s environment.
Then there were the exceptions. Of course you knew this section would come along. Let me warn those who have weak stomachs or are under the age of eighteen that this section is rated R. I won’t forget the lady who could not back up her trailer and was about to place it in the woods whom I offered to help and she told me where to go. I let her put the trailer in the woods. She finally got her trailer into site 21 which is the disabled site. It is reserved for only those with disabilities. This woman and her sister were not disabled but she and her sister were too fat to fit into the regular showers so they enjoyed the extra room of the disabled shower. Site 21 has pavement, a special wheel chair picnic table, and a straight path to the disabled bathroom. This is also the only electric site in the park other than the host site. During the month I was here only one time did a person stay on this site who needed it. That’s not to say that we did not have disabled people camping on other sites, we did, but this site was always taken by fully able, physically capable people who just wanted the electricity. The ranger’s hands are tied if a person states they are disabled they must let them have the spot. One couple simply said they did not know until they got here it was the disability spot. It appears what they tell me and tell the rangers were two different things. Another family said they took it because her deceased husband liked the spot and they enjoyed the privacy of the disabled bathroom. I did take the bathroom key from them and gave it to a gentleman who had suffered a stroke and could not use the regular bathrooms. However, he would have really enjoyed the special picnic table. This site sat across from the host site and each day it was occupied by an able-bodied person my anger grew. Since I have been confined to a wheel chair, I know how limiting it is; if only these people could experience the same, maybe they would be more understanding.
The first weekend I was here the ranger let a group of young adults camp on the overflow site. This spot is kept in case there is a mix up in reservations or when the park is full. The group consisted of two young men, two young women, one of whom was pregnant, a baby, and a dog. They had a tent but not much more in the way of camping equipment. What they did not plan on was the dog sleeping in the tent with the five of them. The dog was not happy with the arrangement either and sounded its disapproval by loudly barking. The rangers gently corrected them until they understood what the rules were, soon the park was quiet. The next day we were walking by their campsite and I noticed one of the young men holding a pistol. I called the rangers who investigated and found a pellet gun which was altered to look like a real pistol. They entered the campsite as if he was fully armed with a loaded handgun. Next was the dog again which they had on a thirty-foot leash and was terrorizing everyone who walked by. Once again the rangers took care of the situation. I am not certain how many times the rangers had to come up to this site to quiet them down or enforce the rules but it was numerous. The important thing is that at the end of the weekend while they were packing up one of the young men commented to me that they had a great time and would definitely come camping again. The rangers could have evicted them from the park at the first offense but instead chose to educate them on how to behave in a campground. The young people were receptive, changed their behaviors and had a good time. They had one more lesson to learn however, how to leave a campsite. Site 32 is the furthest from the bathroom and there was a pregnant girl in the group. I learned that the numerous paths behind the campsites were the "pee paths" and occasionally would find evidence of this fact; however, they had left a roll or two of used Charmin in the bushes. Now I had a use for the long-handled gripper. They received one more lesson from the rangers this time in the form of a letter.
Now for the juicy part. Campsite #5. This is the most remote site in the park, nestled in the woods on a turn in the road. There is no visibility into this site from neighboring campsites and this group of four young people pitched their tent in such a way that almost all visibility was blocked from the road. Though it was difficult to see exactly what these three young women and one young man were doing it was not hard to hear. Fortunately they were camping during the week and the park was not crowded but there were other campers and as I stated before most of our campers were families. The rangers took the approach of trying to educate these people as to what is and what is not acceptable in a public campground. They needed to learn to keep their clothing on when outside of the tent and the noises down when inside of the tent. I passed by the site shortly before they left and can report that the rangers were not successful on either account with this group. The clean up of their site proved to be most interesting and can best be told like this. My four-year-old grandson, Sammy, would come with me to clean up the sites, he loved helping grandpa. When we started cleaning this site, he came upon some things he had not seen before and asked me what they were. I being the open grandfather always eager to educate my grandson took one look at the pile of feminine products and quickly took him back to our campsite and left him with his grandmother. I cleaned the site without his help but not until the rangers came and took pictures so these folks could be cited for the mess.
Other memorable messes were the cabinet doors hidden in the woods. These folks tried to say they were antique doors which they were refinishing and forgot to bring home but capitulated when confronted with the fact that the fire pit was filled with hinges and screws. Then the reunion. This was a group of 75 related people who all camped out on various spots throughout the park and left each site a mess, including the one they used as a banquet site. Finally there was the chain smoker. I will never understand why people need to come to the great outdoors, breathe the fresh air and smoke cigarettes. This particular lady smoked hundreds of them during the weekend. She never left the picnic table so each of the butts was tossed under the table. My wife Fran started the pick up with a vengeance and I went back with a rake to finish the job. This was fortunate since that week we had a group of twenty two-high school kids ride their bikes up to the camp and this was one of the sites they occupied.
I can remember the messes since there were so few of them, most campers left the sites as clean or cleaner than they found them. I also remember the oddballs since most of the people were normal, nice folks who just wanted a few days in the woods to enjoy themselves. This weekend is July 4th and I go home on Saturday. The park is filling up. The Summerfest Music Festival has started in Milwaukee and we have several groups of young people camping here who are attending the festival. I walked around to each group to remind them of designated drivers and wish them a good time. One young lady said I sounded like her father but then she thanked me. During this past month I have developed a real attachment for the campers and I do want them to be safe. We already have several families who are here for the long holiday weekend. They come each year and stay on the same site, it is their family tradition.
Speaking of traditions I have been asked to return next year for the month of June and have said yes. This would be a great new tradition to start, a month of camping each June in my favorite state park.
