This is a modern day luxury of life I took for granted, until the 29th of July this year. I always knew in the back of my mind that the hardest thing to obtain on this trip, would be the ability to start the day feeling fresh.
Over the course of 70 or so days, we've become increasingly resourceful in the methods we've used to get clean. The methods of obtaining running water (sometimes hot) to wash ourselves in has varied wildly.
We started off on our first night landing on our feet by staying with some family friends, who gave us beds, a shower and even a hot meal! The next shower ended up being a hole in the ground with water from a nearby hot spring...Which was surprisingly refreshing in the dry desert heat.
Vegas wasn't an issue, as we ended up staying in a hotel for two nights...
However that would be the last running water we saw again for some time again until Tucson, Arizona.
We stayed at an RV Park, and had the pleasure of clean showers, laundry and a swimming pool in which we sipped cold beers in whilst watching the distant thunder storm light the sky.
New Mexico would not grant us with a drop of water, and so it would be a Motel in Dallas when I could finally experience the wonderful feeling of hot water against my skin.Memphis resulted in a shower courtesy of a 'friend' that Andy made whilst there... But we would wait again till New Orleans before having the opportunity to wake up and have a shower...
At this stage I'm aware that I'm not really telling the most exciting story.. So I'll skip forward to Virginia where we got desperate and needed to find a new method to get a shower.
So apart from holes in the ground, motels, friends houses, RV Parks the other venues we've resorted to have been Gyms.
In Richmomd, we were having no luck with couch surfing requests, nor did we fancy shelling out for a motel.... That's when it occurred to me... Gyms have showers.
We rang around and found a gym, offering a 7 day trial membership. BINGO. After a quick tour of the place, and some paperwork, we were in and able to scrub off the previous few days of funk. Needless to say, this method of free showers, has been repeated more than once... Recently it didn't go exactly to plan, and meant that we paid $10 for a day pass.
I write this blog after having had a free shower at a service plaza on the I-80 where we spent the night on the way to Detroit.
There's still a couple more weeks to go, so who knows what other methods I'll end up adding to the list...
Location:USA
