Six On, Six Off: National Parks Offer Flexible Jobs, Scenic Spaces

Facing a layoff in his 50s, Scott Coombs quickly solved the problem of how to pay the mortgage. He and his wife, Lori, simply got rid of it, selling their three-bedroom Cape Cod-style home in Grottoes, Va., and heading west in an RV.

The bold move put them on a long and winding road to Death Valley, Calif., where they spend the mild winter months in semi-isolation as seasonal employees of the National Park Service. From October through April, they help run the quirky, high-desert tourist attraction known as Scotty's Castle, a Spanish-style mansion in the middle of nowhere left over from the gold prospecting days of the early 20th century. During their off hours, the Coombses reside in their 38-foot vehicle in a tiny RV park, connected to the outside world by DirecTV and a satellite internet uplink.

Come springtime, they gas up -- the nearest filling station is 45 miles away, in Stovepipe Wells -- and roll on.

"We're 110 miles from the grocery store," says Scott Coombs, a 57-year-old former training coordinator for a contracting firm. When they shop for food, they cross the state line to Pahrump, Nev. "It's an all-day affair," he says, "but we've adapted. We've gotten used to it."

The reward is a flexible schedule and the chance to explore some of the most scenic terrain in the United States. The jobs that they found, on the government website USAjobs.gov, are a magnet for adventurous people looking for encore careers that enable them to work half the year and have idle months to do other things, says Cheryl Chipman, a spokesperson for Death Valley National Park.

"We have a number of employees who spend part of the year here and part of the year somewhere else," says Chipman. She notes that some people, hooked on working in the spectacularly beautiful national parks, follow the seasons from one to another. "We have people go up to Yellowstone in the summer, and up to Alaska. They can go anywhere in Montana, Washington, Colorado..."

Other federal agencies also offer seasonal jobs in the hinterlands, she says, including the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management.

Death Valley is one of the more unlikely destinations, so oppressively hot --temperatures often top 120 degrees -- that it's a wasteland in the summer. But during the winter, tourists stream in from throughout the world to camp, hike and sightsee among the desert sand dunes, salt flats and rugged canyons. The wildflower season in March and April draws thousands of photographers.

The Coombses, whose grown children, Beth and Christopher, both worked for the park service, were already aware of the seasonal job opportunities when Scott was laid off in early 2009. They have alternated between Death Valley and other parks -- Grand Teton and Devil's Tower in Wyoming and Scotts Bluff National Monument in Nebraska -- and use their free months to travel and hike abroad.

"We were in New Zealand for five weeks," says Lori Coombs, 52, a former middle-school teacher. "While out on the trails, we lived in huts. And we just got back from three weeks in Ireland. Because we were seasonal employees and not stuck to a regular work schedule, we were able to do that."

In Death Valley, the Coombses live and work alongside a small cadre of kindred spirits, including Ron Motter and Ellie Knapp-Motter (left), who started as volunteers at various national parks before securing paid seasonal positions in 2000. Since then, they have held 21 park jobs across the U.S., traveling from one to another in a 40-foot motorhome.

Ron Motter, a former teacher and grant writer for public schools in Athens, Ohio, is 73 and often leads the Scotty's Castle tour. Ellie Knapp-Motter, who is 65, is a onetime accountant and antiques dealer who applies her financial expertise to collecting ticket fees and working in the gift shop. Death Valley is their favorite wintertime gig because they love to hike and explore the desert.

"A good walk, across any part of Death Valley I haven't been on, is fantastic," Motter says.

"We go out to the canyons, lots of historic mining sites," his wife adds. "Many times, we don't see anybody else for the whole day." The couple savors magical places, such as Racetrack Playa, where heavy rocks skate across the mud flats in the wind, and a slot canyon where a waterfall tumbles into the desert year-round. This year, they bought an off-road Jeep to venture further into the wilderness.

"We go on those dirt roads that we warn our visitors to stay off of," Motter says. "The more you come back, the more in-depth you want to go."

Knapp-Motter, who jokingly calls their small circle of seasonal employees "the semi-affluent homeless," says they have been fortunate to find the ideal lifestyle.

"We prefer the desert to just about anything else," she says. "We're desert rats."

Part 1: Six On, Six Off: National Parks Offer Flexible Jobs, Scenic Work Spaces
Part 2: Six On, Six Off: From Corporate Chicago to "Trop Rock" in Key West
Part 3: Six On, Six Off: Wild West Adventures (With a Parisian Twist)

SecondAct contributor David Ferrell is a Southern California journalist and the author of Screwball, a comic baseball novel.