We arrived in Lake City, Colorado a few weeks ago to start another summer workamping job at Vickers Ranch. Through the years we’ve discovered there are many trade-offs to remote workamping jobs, but they don’t matter when you find a gig this good. The work is hard but the people are great, the scenery is spectacular and as Larry Vickers likes to say “It don’t get no better than this!”
Returning to the Vickers homestead is always a breath of fresh air in a crazy world. Things are slower here. Lake City is a small historic town in a big, dramatic mountain range that isn’t overrun with crowds like other Colorado mountain destinations.
Remote Workamping Jobs Benefits and Trade-Offs
Grocery shopping used to be an ordeal here. We’d spend our only day off driving an hour-plus one way to shop. But things are easier now that the High Country Market is well-established. They’re one big reason why we returned to Lake City. Peter and Patty’s store is a lifesaver in a place where the only other option used to be what’s jokingly referred to as “The Food Museum.” Get the joke?
- Trade-offs of remote workamping jobs: sky high grocery bills
- Benefits of remote workamping jobs: we’ll probably buy one tank of fuel all summer. And we pay nothing for rent!
Rural town prices reflect the trade-offs of remote workamping in beautiful places. When you shop, you just suck it up and pay whatever it takes to eat well. Or spend your day driving. You decide.
During our weekly grocery trip to Peter and Patty’s store, we don’t look too closely at prices. We’re just grateful we don’t have to drive to the nearby “big” town of Gunnison (pop: 6,000) just to shop.
Another way we’re coping is by joining Amazon Prime.
With monthly Prime memberships now available for $10.99 a month, we’re getting food products delivered through Amazon Pantry. It doesn’t offer a huge assortment of healthy foods we usually buy, but it’s got the basic mass consumer type items from General Mills, Nabisco, etc. With a $5.99 flat rate shipping charge for a huge box like this, it’s easy to fill it up.
When combined with our monthly Melaleuca shopping and a twice-monthly Schwans delivery, we’re good to go.
For the next two months we’re handing over more money than ever to Amazon (aka The Great Satan). But that’s OK. As Prime members we also get loads of free music and videos to stream over the ranch’s awesome new wifi system. That’s another benefit of many remote working jobs like this: more free broadband than you could ever want!
This summer our goal is to never go to Gunnison to shop. We kept our dollars local in 2014, I’m pretty confident we can do it again this time.