5 Tips for using shower facilities at a campground
Showering in an RV doesn’t have to be challenging and here are five tips for using RV showers and camp showers. One great thing about a newer RV is that you don’t have to go outside to find a bathroom. Or a shower, for that matter. Unless you really want to.
Our Mini-Lite has a great bathroom. Lots of storage, plenty of room, a heater vent. What’s not to love? Even the shower is a good size, and with the Oxygenics shower head we installed, it’s a great experience.
And yet, for some reason, whenever we go to a new campground, I like to explore the shower house. I absolutely can, and often do, shower in Curby. But sometimes it’s nice not to have to consider that there are only six gallons of hot water, and perhaps a limited amount of fresh water if we aren’t hooked up, and that the grey-water tank is filling up. In fact Tony’s overflowed the grey tank. Twice.
The advantages of showering in the shower house is that you aren’t likely to run out of hot water. Or water in general. And you get to walk through camp in your PJs.
But are there any tricks to showering in the camphouse showers? Absolutely!
Tony found that he likes to wear those water shoes he bought on a cruise ship. The shoes are designed to be worn under water while exploring exotic ports looking for exotic sea life but he uses them to keep from getting exotic foot conditions that other RVers felt kind enough to leave behind.
Not all campground showers are very nice.
We’ve also found that taking over-the-door plastic hanger hooks solves the problem in some RV parks of not having enough places to hang your stuff. One or two of these plastic hooks can really be handy and they will hang over the walls of most shower houses spectacularly.
You can hang your towels, dry clothes or whatever you’d like on these. And speaking of hanging, a mesh shower caddy folds up very nicely and transfers between the shower in your RV and the one in the campground’s shower house.
In the over-the-door shower caddy we have several film canisters full of quarters. Since many RV parks use coin-operated showers this means you won’t have to walk back to the RV when you realize that this is the case - and you’ll always have plenty of quarters. It’s inevitable that, no matter how many quarters you put in, you’ll need just that one more to finish rinsing.
Of course the shower caddy is a great place to hold travel-sized bottles of shampoo, conditioner, a tooth brush, toothpaste, and shower gel.
On the subject of shower gel, we’ve finally given up bar soap as it’s just too inconvenient to bring on vacation. It’s slippery and messy and you know you’re going to drop it in the public shower and then wonder whose hair that is. Ew. Shower gel has become the go-to.
It also helps to have a small duffel bag with all your shower essentials in it including the over-the-door hanging hooks as well as your shower caddy and a towel. This way you can put the clean clothes in the duffel bag and then the dirties in a hamper bag for their journey back to the camper.
The advantages of showering in the RV are that you know who’s feet have been in the shower. And all your stuff is there. And you don’t have to dress in public. And you don’t have to save up your quarters. And it’s always open. And it’s always clean.
Hmmm… I think I just convinced myself that he RV shower is better! Except when I want a long, hot shower…
