Shower/No shower

[CajunCamper]

Responses to your advantages and disadvantages.


Advantages:

- No walking to the public shower..........I kind of enjoy the night time or morning stroll.
- No waiting in line at the public shower.........Never had to wait to take a shower.
- No worry about the cleanliness of the public shower.............Have always had clean bath houses.
- No shower shoes.........No biggie
- Your PopUp will likely have an outside shower too!...........Have a portable shower tent and portable shower.
- You won't be catching mysterious strains of foot fungus............Have never caught any foot funk.
- No worry about the right change to carry to the shower...........never seen a pay shower, if I did I would use my portable shower.
- You can shower at any time...........Didn't know I couldn't.
- You don't have to worry if the campsite even has public showers..........Never been a worry
- Greater resale value..........Not planning on selling

Disadvantages:

- All that foot fungus spray you purchased at wholesale is now worthless!.............Once again never had foot funk.
- Nobody to chat with in line at the shower line first thing in the morning...................Once again never stood in line.
- If you enjoyed wearing wet clothes after they fell on the public shower floor, that will go away..............I keep my cloths off of the floor
- Some folks without showers will rave about how much more storage space they have and how your camping methodology is vastly inferior.........I really don't care how you camp.
- You need to wipe down and occasionally clean your shower............That sucks
- No more interesting fungal experiments between your toes to discuss with your doctor, or around the campfire!.............Not sure where you are sticking your feet.
- If you boondock, you need to carefully think about and plan for getting sufficient quantities of fresh water to and grey water from your campsite........I'll give you that one.
- When boondocking, having to provide fresh water to some people without inside showers, who didn't think about bringing vast quantities of fresh water in the first place.............You must be camping with rookies.

[TroutBum]

I'm with you Cajun...

None of the advantages listed seemed that big to me, and none of the disadvantages seemed insumountable.

If you need wholesale quantities of anti-fungal medicine I would suggest checkng out the campground reviews and picking a better place to camp.

I am yet to see a public shower at a campground that is as bad as the ones I have had to use while traveling throughout Africa and S. America.  Heck, the dorm showers in college would occasionally be worse than anything I have seen at a campground- especially on the weekends.

[flyfisherman]

I suppose it's to each his own.  For me it's the farther away in the boonies the better. If need be, bathing in the river will work; or a warm water bath, washing the essential parts, using a 5/gal bucket. To me that's what camping is all about. When I was a boy my parents did the state and county park thing just using an old timey canvas wall tent and we seem to have gotten by for two or three weeks.

The less maintenance that has to be done on the PU the better. By the way, I have stashed away in one of the storage holds, a (never used) Coleman bag shower that you hang from a tree ... anyone ever use one these things?

There is one place we go that's a ways off the beaten path and about the time we start begining to become rank, we go over to a county park that has hot showers and they use tokens. When you camp there you have access to the shower, but if your staying out in the national forest like we do, you can buy the shower tokens for $1.00 each and it really takes a couple to give you a good warm, clean shower. Hey for a couple of bucks and staying out in the nat'l forest free, it's a good deal.

[poptoit2]

I'm new to all of this too.  Although I camped quite frequently (all summer) as a kid and never had a shower in the camper (5th wheeler).  DH and I just bought a 2007 FW Cheyenne last week (in storage until March but that's a different topic).  We seriously considered getting PUP with a shower; however, we didn't like any of the floor plans that would go with our TV (2001 Pontiac Montana).  All our children are grown so this wasn't something for us to worry about.  DH & I have been tent camping for quite some time and wanted to upgrade now that our bodies don't take well to sleeping on the ground anymore.

DH often wakes in the middle of the night to read, etc and the floor plans meant he would have to crawl over many sofas, tables or something else in the middle of the night just to get to a seat.  At 50+ w/back issues this was not an option.  Some models the shower was right behind the stove and refer making access a little close when I need to be cooking.  Our Cheyenne does have an outdoor shower, so this was fine for us.  The PUP does have a hot water tank so the outdoor shower can be warm if we want it to be.  I'm thinking a bathing suit and shower basics would be just fine until we got home if we get dirty hiking.  The longest trip we have planned is a week of camping up the east coast to Maine (frm D.C. area). Mostly it will be for weekends and the outside shower or mother nature will suit us just fine.

We also didn't want to have to worry about the maintenance and clean up on a feature that we can live without for a short time.  Like others we never had issues with the campground showers.  I wear shower shoes at the gym so it is not a biggie for me to pack them in the camper.  We also are considering camping late into a season when the evenings will get below freezing, so we didn't want to have to deal with that water line also.  Like other posters said, I would purchase what works for you and your situation.

[tlhdoc]

Just another twist on the indoor/outdoor shower.  I have an indoor shower and an outdoor shower.  I use both.  I can also use my indoor shower outside.  Why would I want to do that?  The outdoor shower is on the road side of my PU.  The indoor shower is on the curb side of my PU.  There are times when I would rather shower on the curb side of my PU.  Just unzip the tenting where the box and the bunkend tenting meet and put the shower hose out through the opening.  I purchased a 1/2 inch treaded nipple to connect 2 shower hoses together so I can shower further away from my PU.