How to Take a Campground Shower in 10 Easy Steps

(Read Now to Receive 2 Bonus Prep Steps and 3 Special Opportunities!)

Whether you find yourself in a long-neglected, government-run bathroom facility with more spider webs than towel hooks or in a fancy RV resort’s shower house with a bucket of gift flip flops, following these 10 easy steps will increase your chances for a successful shower experience.

Bonus prep steps for before you embark on your campground shower:

• Research if you’ll need money. Look for reviews on campground apps for reports that you’ll have to pay for your time with running water. If you will, consider aborting the shower from the get-go. With a minute of water per quarter, chances are you’ll end up scrambling for a coin with soap, shampoo, or both in your eyes. Might as well take a chilly, cramped, short shower in your own damned trailer. 
• Research if you’ll have any privacy. This crucial prep provides another opportunity to abort the mission before you begin. Potential levels of horror all are based on shower curtain versus stall door versus wall. You might find:
  1. One open room, high-school-gym style. Enough said.
  2. A plastic shower curtain dividing your shower spot from the group dressing area. Don’t be fooled: you’re still going to have to see someone naked you can’t unsee.
  3. Your own shower and separate dressing area, with a slimy, always-threatening-to-touch-your-naked-self plastic curtain between, and, if you’re lucky, a swinging stall door out into the bathroom proper.
  4. Actual separate room with your own shower and dressing areas, and a real door between you and the outside world. Jackpot. 

If It’s a Go:

1. Pack your stuff, carefully.

• Preferred container: a woven, market-type basket (benefit: handle) or plastic-box type basket (benefit: $50 less, and you can turn it upside down to use as a dry table).
  • In either, you can fit: clean clothes, a scrubbing implement, your towel, and your bathroom supplies bag for the trip to and from.
  • If the shower house is far from your trailer and your shower basket doesn’t fit in your bike basket, use a cloth grocery bag. 
  • If you’re biking and you neglect to pack a bag, be sure your towel doesn’t fall through the holes in your bike basket and get caught around your tire.  No one wants to rub dirty rubber skid marks on themselves as they dry off. Trust me. 
• Pack a plastic bowl for your phone, watch, and eyeglasses. Assume everything will get wet and that you’ll slip and fall onto it all. 
• Pack an over-the-door hook in case there are no hooks and there happens to be a door.
• Pack or wear flip flops or Crocs so your bare feet don’t touch the slimy public bathroom floor. 
• Pack loose, clean clothes to put on after, because you’re going to be slightly wet (see bike tire skid marks, above) and cold (see quarters, above), and it’s easier to put on loose clothes under those conditions. And to put them on fast. 

2. Knock on the door when you get there (if you’re lucky to have a door).  A shocking amount of people shower without locking the door. And I mean shocking. 

3. Lock the door behind you. Be mindful when you do, so you’ll remember for sure when you’re standing in the shower and someone tries the handle. 

4. Assess the variables inside.

• Look at the lighting, available hooks or shelf (or lack thereof), insects above and below and the threat of insects unseen, and location of open toilet to dressing area (for when your things fall off inadequate hooks). For example, is the overhead lighting fixed to a motion-detector, so the lights go off after you’re in there for a few minutes, leaving you wet and naked in the dark? Are there zero hooks or a shelf, so your clothes and towel have to pile in a wet corner? How much of a dance might you have to do between the moving shower curtain and the encroaching spiders, with hot or cold water spurting at unpredictable intervals? Consider all.  
• Most important: test the water BEFORE you take your clothes off. If there’s no hot water and you want to abort the mission at this late stage, the blow to your psyche will be softened if you’re not standing there naked trying to decide. NEVER TAKE A COLD SHOWER BECAUSE YOU’RE ALREADY NAKED. Your comfort level will only go downhill.

5. Unpack your stuff, carefully.

• For inside the shower, lay out your soap in an easy-to-grab portable tray. Put your shampoo and other stuff where you can reach it, no matter what kind of spray the shower head presents you with. If there’s duct tape holding the shower head on, wiggle the head with the water running to try to predict the trajectory. 
• For the dressing areas with a hook, hang the clothes you’ll want to put on first on the outside of the clothes you’ll put on last (i.e. underwear hanging on top of outerwear). No matter what order you hang them in, they’ll end up on the wet floor, but at least you’ll be familiar with where they are in relation to each other to grab what you need first when you’re wet and cold.

6. Do your crucial washing immediately upon entering the water. Wash your essentials before you wash your hair. Wash your whole body before you decide to shave. You will run out of warm water, so prioritize. What did you wash when you showered last? Consider keeping a list.

7. Use up all the hot water. If you’ve washed and shampooed and shaved and rinsed and still have hot water, you’ve been gifted a rare opportunity. Fuck everyone else and bask in the glory. 

8. Put on certain clothes first feel that make you less vulnerable. Without the sound of water running, someone’s going to try to open your door or pulling at your shower curtain. Don’t bother repacking your stuff until you have your underwear on, at the bare minimum .

9. Don’t leave anything behind. Check behind the shower curtain, up on the disgusting plastic rack hanging from the shower head that you’re nevertheless grateful for, behind the bathroom door. There is no level of paranoia too high, because, once you leave, you’ll never enter that shower again.

10. Cherish your success. In a few days, you’ll go through it all again but at a different campground shower with different variables. Explain this if anyone dares question why you no longer shower every day. 

Even if you follow these 10 simple steps, the unexpected will still surprise you. The cleanest, newest, bug-free, hot shower I ever took (pictured above) turned out not to turn off. I had to get dressed under the spray (because it blew the curtain into the tiny standing area in front of the toilet), then find a park ranger to cut the water to all the shower stalls.

Lesson: Even your dream shower can turn around and bite you.  Maybe just use wipes.