RV Podcast 375: Volunteering at National Parks

Want to save money and camp in beautiful spots? Try volunteering at National Parks!

Most national parks offer free RV pads, hookups, and lots of other perks in exchange for volunteer work at the parks, something we explore in-depth in this episode of the RV Podcast with Tom and Karen Hartley, who have been volunteering at National Parks for several years now.

In all, they've been at nine different National Parks and they share their experiences in this week's RV Interview of the week.

To see a video version of this episode in its entirety, click the player below:

https://youtu.be/jVqZwHIYz0c

For an audio version, you can use your favorite podcast app from Apple, Google, Stitcher Spotify and other podcast players. Or click the audio player in the box below.

And for a slightly edited transcript of the interview, keep scrolling.

Volunteering at National Parks - Tom and Karen Hartley

Karen and Tom in costume as National Park Living History volunteers

Our guests are Tom and Karen Hartley, two veteran volunteers at National Parks whose work has been honored with the distinguished Hartzog Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service to the National Parks. 

The Hartleys are both retired and have been volunteering at National Parks since 2015. They specialize in Living History.

Mike Wendland:

It's a pleasure to have you guys with us, and I'm thrilled to be able to do this interview because Jennifer and I have talked many times about how much fun volunteering in a National Park would be. Why don't you introduce yourselves a little bit to the audience and tell them how that all started.

Karen Hartley:

Well, I was a United Methodist Church pastor, and usually, United Methodist pastors move around a lot, but I was at my church where I was for most of my career for 21 years.

And I didn't get to move around. And so we wanted to do more traveling and moving around once we retired.

Tom Hartley:

I was a professor of electrical computer engineering at the University of Akron, and I was there for 30 years,

Mike Wendland:

The Hartleys are veteran RVers

The Hartleys get free RV parking and hookups while volunteering at National parks.

Had you guys RV'ed before?

Karen Hartley:

Yeah, we started camping with the Boy Scouts a lot and doing backpacking and that sort of stuff. When our son graduated from high school, we had a little Roadtrek and we took that all over the place and spent a lot of time in that. And then when we retired, we bought a fifth wheel, a New Horizons, 35 foot, fifth wheel.

Tom Hartley:

We had a big Ram 5500 truck. So it was a monster.

Karen Hartley:

So it felt like home. It was very comfortable.

Tom Hartley:

It was home. Yes.

Mike Wendland:

And what are you in now?

Tom Hartley:

Well, so at the beginning of the pandemic, we weren't quite sure what was going to happen, how this was going to go. So at that point,