Campground Volunteers : Park Hosts Live in Their Own ‘Bit of Heaven’

They call him “Ranger Ray”--and the 84-year-old man with flowing mustache and long scraggly snow-white beard has been a fixture in this park the last 12 years.

Ray Miller isn’t really a ranger. He is a volunteer, the “Grand Old Man” of the state park campground host program, in which campground caretakers are permitted to live year-round without charge in state parks in return for assisting the real rangers by acting as liaison with campers.

There are volunteer camp hosts, as they are called, in 69 California state parks.

“Camp hosts are our eyes and ears. They’re special people. As staffing levels have gone down due to budgetary constraints, camp hosts have kept our parks running at the level people expect of state parks,” said Bonnie Morse, 33, ranger in charge of the campground host program at Point Mugu and Leo Carrillo Beach State Parks.

“They are dedicated people who agree to spend at least 20 hours a week working in a park without pay and almost always put in a great deal more time than that. They are in the campgrounds at night when we’re not,” Morse added.

Camp hosts perform a wide variety of tasks. They are a source of information about a state park and surrounding area. They help keep the park clean and help with maintenance. They have radios in the trailers where they live and can alert rangers in other parts of the park when problems occur.

“Ranger Ray” is camp host at La Jolla Canyon, site of a trail head for a network of 72 miles of pathways in the Santa Monica Mountains towering above the Pacific Ocean in Ventura County.

Thousands of hikers have come to know “Ranger Ray” and his constant companion, Dyno, his white shaggy mutt. Miller greets them, provides them with a trail map and watches over their vehicles while they hike.

“I’d been long gone if I hadn’t lived here at the trail head in the open so many years,” said Miller, who lived as a cowboy, prospector, railroader and truck driver all over the West before arriving at Point Mugu State Park.

“I got a little bit of heaven here,” he said with twinkle in his eyes and a big grin that emphasizes his missing teeth.

“Where could you find a more beautiful spot?” he asked, waving his arms outward at the verdant mountain embracing his camp.

His neighbors are deer, coyote, mountain lion, bob cat, fox, raccoon, opossum and an abundance of rattlesnakes, which he respects but doesn’t fear. Miller is a bachelor.

On Nov. 15, the State Department of Recreation and Parks officially dedicated and named the campsite cared for so diligently by “Ranger Ray” as the Ray Miller Trail Head.

It was six years ago that the state park campground hosts program was launched. Before that a few volunteer campground caretakers were granted special permission to live year-round in state parks.

Since 1980, the state and camp hosts have signed one-year contracts that can be broken at any time by each party. In half the parks, the program is in effect only during summer and the contract is for that period.

For Margie Gustafson, 52, the camp host program “is a godsend.” Known medically as a “universal reactor,” Gustafson is allergic to practically everything. Her doctor prescribed living on the beach as the best thing for her health.

Margie and her husband, John (Gus) Gustafson, 55, have been camp hosts at Leo Carrillo Beach State Park since the program began in 1980.

“This is a perfect place for me. As long as I live here on the beach in the ocean air with nothing between me and the water but sand I feel halfway normal,” Margie Gustafson explained.

Her allergies are so severe that the couple’s 31-foot trailer has no carpets, drapes or foam insulation. Her husband cooks outside on a Coleman stove.

The trailer has no hookups. It has no electricity. It isn’t heated, for Margie is allergic to propane. “We bundle up when it’s cold,” her husband said. They use candles for lights.

“I had to give up reading newspapers years ago. Rangers ‘bake’ books for me in their ovens, removing offensive odors. I have to wear gloves to read the books,” she noted.

Until her husband retired last May as a data manager for the Navy at Port Hueneme, he had to shower and change his clothes each day before coming home to the trailer to rid himself of cigarette and other odors encountered at his workplace.

Margie Gustafson is able to take care of the needs of those who park their trailers and campers in the blacktop parking area she supervises as a volunteer camp host. Her biggest joy is walks on the beach.

“We have met people from all over the world, from all walks of life who have camped here with us. It’s a beautiful beach. Many film companies use the beach. We met Paul Newman when scenes were filmed here for ‘Harry and Son.’ . . . There’s never a dull moment,” Margie Gustafson said.

Camp host Michael Chudler, 40, and his wife Sheri, 38, have their hands full this time of the year at Big Sycamore Canyon in Point Mugu State Park. Among their volunteer activities are tagging and reporting behavior of Monarch butterflies migrating down the coast. They do the work for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and Santa Barbara Natural History Museum.

Chudler, a motion picture and TV film technician, uses a net to catch the Monarchs and his wife tags them with a small sticky piece of paper that folds over the butterfly’s right wing. Monarchs cluster in sycamore trees in the park by the thousands when the temperature dips below 55 degrees.

“Tagging the monarchs is a special project for us along with our other duties in the campground,” explained Chudler. He said he and his wife were frequent campers at Point Mugu State Park and became acquainted with the rangers there.

“When a camp host opening occurred a year ago, Sheri and I were asked if we would like to live in the park full-time. We signed up without hesitation. We love it.”

Some of the camp hosts have children living with them, such as Bob Young, 35 and his wife, Maureen, 28. Their three sons Jamie, 10, Brandon, 8, Jody, 8, and daughter Anna, 3, share their trailer at La Jolla Beach in Point Mugu State Park.

The three older children are picked up and returned to the campgrounds on a school bus every day.

“We think living in this environment is a great advantage for our children. We don’t own a television set and believe the kids are better off without one,” said Young.

Before living on the beach as camp hosts, the Youngs lived on a 350-acre farm in an 80-year-old farmhouse in Wyoming.

“Now our neighbors and best friends are the park rangers. We take walks in the early morning and late afternoon in the state park and always see deer and other wild animals,” noted Maureen Young. Her husband added:

“Every day is a learning experience for the children. They watch the California gray whales swim close into shore on their incredible migrations and see dolphins frolicking in the surf.

“Our kids got it better than the rich kids in the big mansions in the city.”