Meet Gayle and Bob Caston, Jackson Ranger District, Visitor Information/Front Desk
Gayle and Bob Caston might be doing their first stint as volunteer Ambassadors on the Bridger-Teton National Forest in the summer of 2025, but the couple, who has lived on Florida’s Treasure Coast since the 1980s, has spent “tons of time” in Jackson visiting Gayle’s sister, Tina, who has lived in the valley for decades.
“We’d come out and spend Christmas with her every year,” says the couple, who met in Torrington, Wyoming. “And come at other times of the year whenever we could. We’re really excited to have a whole summer in Jackson Hole, though. We’ll be able to go out hiking whenever we want.”
Gayle and Bob decided to sell their house and be full-time RVers after Covid. “For the first one-and-a-half-years we just popped from place to place,” they say. “Then we started meeting people who were doing the same thing, but volunteering, which we thought sounded great.” The couple has since volunteered on a variety of state and federal public lands, from the Bonneville Dam in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico.
“One of the things we really like about volunteering is that we get to immerse ourselves in a facility and area and learn all of the ins and outs. We learn so much and then we get to share that with people,” they say.
Fluent in Leave No Trace principles and the tenets of responsible recreation, the couple is excited to continue to practice these when out hiking themselves and also to help educate other forest users about these things. “I always have bear spray with me,” Gayle says. “Tina and I have had multiple experiences with bears on trails. We always bring extra water and food, too.”
Fun Facts: A journalist and editor, Bob proposed to Gayle in his weekly column in the Saratoga (Wyoming) Sun. Gayle gave her answer in a letter to the editor in the following week’s paper. The Associated Press picked up the story of the newspaper engagement and they’ve been married since 1982.