Of all the duties charged to Colorado campground hosts,the oddest belongs to two couples at Wolford Mountain Campground.
They’re required to pay $20 to anyone who approaches them with a live, thrashing pike. The money is a bounty payment from the Colorado River Water Conservation District, which owns the 46-site campground and wants to get rid of the predatory pike that were surreptitiously introduced to Wolford Mountain Reservoir earlier this year.
It gives them something to talk about when they meet other campground hosts, the genial volunteers who live in state and national park campgrounds and in other public and private camping sites.
There are more than 250 campground hosts in Colorado. Most of them are retirees, and nearly all live in recreational vehicles or campers parked in the campgrounds.
In exchange for light work — collecting campground tags, tidying campsites after campers move out, selling firewood, cleaning the campground latrine — they get a free place to live for the duration of their stint as host.
“It’s a perfect situation for three or four months,” said Kevin Bittmann who, along with his wife, Karen, works as a Cherry Creek State Park campground host.
“We won the baby-boomer jackpot. We spend summers here, and then we travel and go back to our house in Arizona in October until the next camping season.”
Like most campground hosts, the Bittmans got the job by filing an application with the state parks service.
A rare few, like Great Sand Dunes National Park campground hosts Paul and Peggi Vetri, stumble into the job.
About 10 years ago, as the Vetris chatted with the lone campground host at Badlands National Park, they told him they envied his job. A little later, the park ranger and superintendent approached the Vetris with an offer to extend their stay, free, in exchange for campground host duty. After that, they were hooked.
A campground host is a hybrid of camp counselor and den mother. (Law enforcement is left to park rangers or local sheriffs’ offices.)
They greet new campers and bid farewell to the departees. They make sure tents are staked in the designated area and shush noisy campers during nighttime quiet hours. Perhaps most important, they answer many, many questions.
Compared with the Vetris, who’ve spent nearly nine years hosting gigs at five national parks and Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Bittmanns are newbies.
This is their first year as campground hosts, though they’re longtime fans of Cherry Creek State Park.
“You know how you feel when you go to Hawaii or someplace and you don’t want to ever go home?” Bruce Bittmann asked. “That’s how we’ve always felt here.”
