Retirees welcome campers at Moran

“Foot-Loose, Care Free & Dun Working; No Business; No Politicking; No Money; No Worries; Retired Since 1998,” reads the business card that John and Anne Maas give to acquaintances. They may be retired from his business as a heavy equipment mechanic and her job of choir director and organist but they have still worked every summer for the past 10 years as campground hosts at Moran State Park.

Vacations for them have always meant camping. For more than 50 years, on-and-off they have been camping at Moran State Park as well as throughout every other state in the United States except Hawaii.

“One day Dennis Flowers, the head ranger, asked if we had ever considered being campground hosts and we decided to give it a try. It’s mostly a PR job for the park. You have to like people to do it. And, you have to like dogs. We are available to tell the other campers about what trails are best for hiking if they want a long hike or if they are hiking with a six-year-old. We have ferry schedules. We pick-up trash. We sell them wood. Anything to help,” Anne says.

In exchange for water, sewer, electricity and no camping fees they are required to work or be available 28 hours a week. But the Maases admit they put in many more hours. They sometimes take care of things so that the camp aids and rangers don’t have to like cleaning up restrooms, cleaning fire pits or breaking into cars.

With his heavy equipment and mechanical knowledge, John is in demand to retrieve keys locked inside cars and repair vehicles for campers and rangers at Moran and other island state parks.

“The rangers know John can break into a car in less than a minute,” Anne says.

The first year they were hosts in August and September. “Just to give it a try. Every year we started coming a little earlier and leaving a little later. Now we come in May and leave after Labor Day,” John said. “I don’t think we will come earlier than May though,” Anne adds.

For their first few years, they were hosts at midway but they have been at their new location, #84, for the past seven years. “It had been somewhat neglected before we came. We pulled several barrels of trash out of here the first year,” Anne says. They soon became known as Grandpa John and Grandma Anne.

“That was Anne’s idea,” John says. “It started with this little boy about four years old who was lost leaving the restroom. One of the campers came and told us. Anne went down, while I finished dressing, and told him, ‘Don’t worry Grandpa John is going to help you find your tent.’”

“Grandpa is a comforting thought to a child. I didn’t want him to be frightened,” Anne says.

“I came down and took him around looking for his tent. There must have been 20 tents but soon he recognized his. We had him home before his parents even woke up,” John continued.

“The Grandpa and Grandma stuck. It’s more user-friendly. Pretty soon older people were calling us Grandpa John and Grandma Anne. Now, we put it on our host sign,” Anne says.

“We enjoy meeting people. For example, there was this little boy from Louisville, Kentucky camping with his mom. He came by to get some firewood and we got talking about fishing. I keep a fishing pole here that I found in the trash and refurbished for people to use. I told him he could use it. I went down with him for about half and hour and helped him fish. He caught a little bass. He was happier than all get out by catching that little bass. He did not have any father figure. There is joy in something like that,” John says.

The Maases have many of the same people come back to their campsite year-after-year, including boy scouts, athletic teams and families. They also enjoy camaraderie with the other three campground hosts who they get together and have breakfast with once a week.

They say that the six things they think everyone who comes to Orcas should experience are the deer, Mount Constitution, Rosario Mansion, Christopher Peacock’s history slide show and organ recital, the falls and a hike around Cascade Lake.

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