Campground hosts offer a summer's worth of smiles

Real people

MAT-SU — This spring, Lloyd and Jo Pingel were planning a new start after Lloyd's retirement from Wisconsin Fuel and Light, where he worked for 31 years.

The couple had both options and priorities. One option was to volunteer for the Alaska State Parks and recreation campground host program, a gig Jo found on the Internet. Another option was to sell their house in Hatley, Wis. and build a smaller one. And Jo wanted to keep working. At 48, she had a career in nursing and was not ready to retire.

But none of those were priorities. The only sure thing on the Pingels' list was a trip north.

"I have a daughter who lives in Anchorage and she's going to make me a grandmother for the first time in a couple of weeks," Jo said.

The Pingels weren't in too much of a hurry to sell their house, so rather than list the property with an agent, they sort of casually hung a for-sale sign, as if casting a spinner into a lake to see if anything would bite. The house sold within six weeks. Things were about to change fast. Jo said that's when the tentative plans to become campground hosts became solid.

"We couldn't back out— we didn't have a place to live," Jo said.

So Jo followed her husband's lead and left her job at Wausau Community Health Care behind.

"It was quite a settled career for me," she said. "It was a big deal for me to leave my job because I love it so much."

While they do have a couple of days off a week to go sightseeing or fishing, the Pingels' Alaskan summer isn't the white-water, nose-to-nose-with-a-bear, or cruise-ship vacation most people expect. The campground host's job is to give directions, both around the campground and around Alaska's road system, when people ask.

The couple also remind campers there are fees for day use, boat launching, and overnight camping at Finger Lake. The Pingels emphasized that enforcement isn't part of the job. "We don't give out tickets, we give out smiles," is how Jo puts it. Almost everything Jo says is punctuated with a smile. That goes for Lloyd too, whether he's talking about the gas works in Wisconsin or the waterfowl nests at Finger Lake.

But given all the wild places in Alaska, campgrounds at the edge of Denali or near the ocean, why would a campground host want to volunteer for a position in the suburbs?

The Pingels said things just sort of worked out that way, and Finger Lake just happened to be the perfect fit. The baby was the highest priority, and Jo found an Anchorage-based placement agency that keeps her working as a nurse.

Like many Valley professionals, she's commuting to Anchorage this week, but the agency could tap her to fill a vacancy at any of Southcentral Alaska's hospitals. Jo has experience in hospital, hospice, and in-home care, so her skills will be valuable wherever the couple decides to travel next.

The Pingels keep track of things back home with phone calls and e-mail, and their friends keep track of them. Their friends from Wisconsin are curious about Alaska, and the Pingels are constantly describing things for them.

Many of them are surprised to learn that Jo is commuting on a freeway from suburbia to a nursing job in the city. Jo seems a little surprised by this herself. Their hometown of Hatley has a population of just 300.

"People at home can't believe that I'm living in a campground in Alaska and I'm five minutes from a Wal-Mart," she said. "I never lived within five minutes of a Wal-Mart at home."

Things seem busier than ever for the Pingels. Contractors are building their new home in Wisconsin even while the couple is in Alaska awaiting a new grandchild.

"Can you imagine that," Lloyd asked, "building a house while you're up here?"

That part took faith, Jo said. Faith, and a daughter in Wisconsin who lives next door to the new house. "You just have to trust things to work out," Jo said.

Things have been working out pretty well. The Pingels have window boxes and flower pots around their camp site, a nod to Jo's flower gardens in Hatley, and they said 99 percent of the people they meet are friendly.

There's not much they'd change, except Jo wants more signs at the campground asking boaters to steer clear of bird nests. She's working with park rangers to get that done.

The couple said one grebe, which they consider to be their neighbor, has built a nest and laid an egg each week, only to have the nest broken up by wakes.

"I wish they'd stay away from the shallow nesting areas and play in the deep parts," Lloyd said. "You wouldn't want someone to just walk in your front door and do whatever, and you're walking in the bird's front door, more or less."

The Pingels realize that most of the people who use Finger Lake are locals who might think of the lake as a playground, rather than as habitat to be preserved. The Pingels encourage people to have fun, but they want Finger Lake to provide for both wildlife and fun.

With a few signs and a whole summer's worth of smiles, Jo is hoping to nudge lake users into becoming more mindful of the birds that nest in suburbia.

"I think if people can learn to think of it as a nesting area, that would help," she said.