The Art of the Van Shower
Trust me, if your only criteria for finding a place to shower on the road is price, you're going to have a bad time.
One of the most common questions I get asked about living in my van is: “but how do you shower?” It’s technically a harmless logistics question that most people ask either to gauge if they would be able to handle this element of vanlife themselves or to prove themselves right that the con of cleanliness does in fact outweigh the pro of everything else. But more often than not, I can hear a distinct intonation in their voice, implying ever so subtly: but how clean can you be? Maybe I should start asking people the same question in response.
I was surprised at first by how many varied options there are for showering on the road. Between truck drivers, seasonal workers, cross-country road-trippers, and full-time nomads (estimated at around a million people in the United States), there is an entire ecosystem of utilities and services we have access to in transit, even when you haven’t already planned for it.
It’s always more of an art than a science when it comes to finding a place to shower. Showers, of course, are not made the same: costs vary, cleanliness definitely varies, and accessibility ranges from taking your pick of any option to “shit, I hope at least one of these stalls doesn’t have a clump of hair in it.” Finding a shower is so situational that it’s impossible to give a definitive list of advice or rank all of the objectively best and worst places to shower on the road.
That being said, for over a year of cleaning myself in a range of weird circumstances, I have come to a semi-organized ranking of the best places to go for a shower on the road. The only criteria I have is to consider each of these situations in the context of needing a shower first and foremost. Let’s begin with the worst:
Ten: Motels. Only once was I stupid enough to crash at a motel for the night specifically for a shower. If you’ve reached the point in your weary day of travel that you’ve become desperate enough to consider paying $70 just to clean yourself in an extremely questionable shower, it’s too late. Don’t bother. Just crash in the van and start again tomorrow. The water pressure will be weak and unsatisfying; the towels will feel scratchy and smell damp; you’ll sleep the most shallow slumber while every person walking by your outside-facing window makes just enough noise to jolt you awake every couple of hours. Never worth it for a shower.
Nine: Hotels. Even though a hotel is more expensive, the calculation here doesn’t just shift to reflect a difference in price. It’s still not a fiscally wise choice - $120 for a shower, on the grimier side - but the benefits weigh heavier. $50 isn’t insignificant to me, especially just for one night, which is why this option is only slightly more appealing than its scratchy-towel counterpart. I have relied on this option only once - as my other option that day was couch-surfing with a friend of a friend and showering in a group house - and I felt justified at the time. But that was early on in the van when I felt anxious about not knowing when or where the next stop would be. I would overcorrect by paying for a too much for a shower at the moment, just in case. These days, I’ve become more resourceful and frankly blasé about showering, and don’t think this option is worth it for just a shower anymore.
Eight: Campgrounds. A campground shower feels incredibly different depending on how you ended up there. If you’re staying in a campground because you’re camping, then that shower will always feel amazing no matter what. But if you’re going to a campground because you need a shower, this one is pretty low on the list. Sure, the campsite itself might be $30 a night, but the showers cost extra and they’re coin-operated: 50 cents for 3 minutes. You might think to yourself “oh, a dollar-fifty is plenty, I just need to wash my hair” - but you might be wrong. You might actually have needed an additional 3 minutes to get all of the conditioner out of your hair because you spent the first few minutes of your shower trying to get a moth out of the water without killing it. And you didn’t want to actually touch the moth because it was on the floor, and who knows when the last time they really cleaned these floors were, so instead you lightly kick at it until it gets the hint to go elsewhere. And not only is the water pressure terrible, but the shower head is less of a “head” and more of a hose coming out of the wall and the water doesn’t spray far enough or sit high enough up to reach your whole body without you having to rotate almost against the wall of the shower which, again, seems dicey at best. And then you have to exit the shower in the 48-degree cold, walk over to the coin machine in a towel with your wallet and wet hair, and fight with the piece of shit for several minutes trying to feed one of three perfectly wrinkle-free dollar bills into the slot until finally, you have to take a few big deep breaths, accept your fate, and rinse your hair out in the sink. But hey, you probably then get to camp next to a boomer couple in a giant Class A motorhome who never smile or say hello while they gas up the generator at 6 am. Not the worse deal, but not worth it for the shower.
Seven: Tinder. Showers will vary. Most are just fine. A few are truly gross. More often than not, you end up wondering why you’d bother going somewhere to shower when you have a perfectly good sink that you can use back in the van instead. Maybe you luck out one day and find a shower that feels surprisingly refreshing and makes you start to think “wow, I really did not expect to have a shower this good right now, I was thinking this would just be a one-time shower but maybe I should come back and shower here again sometime.” But, for the most part, the odds are stacked against this method. Not worth it for the shower.
Six: Truck Stops. This is where the calculation starts to get interesting. $13 for a shower, unlimited time, in a small, private room with a lock. Truck stop showers are more expensive than they should be largely because many trucking companies include a monthly or yearly allotment of shower tokens as a part of their compensation package. This means that drivers end up with more than they can use as they are not able to roll over excess shower tokens. The gas stations and truck stops know this, so they charge whatever they want knowing that it’s coming from a corporate trucking company. Once on a long stretch of nothing in Wisconsin, I was both curious and grimy enough to want to try one out. It felt incredibly off-putting to go up to the counter of a gas station and ask for a shower. It is in no way a big deal to anyone else there, but I still felt a little on edge, like people were watching me do something intimate. The shower itself was perfectly clean, but the production of walking to the back of a gas station in public alone to take a shower is too weird. High accessibility and relative cleanliness, but $13 is not quite worth it for the shower.
Five: Planet Fitness. Truly the most mid option that exists. $25 a month for a membership: mid-price. Locations in most cities and suburbs but not in any rural places when you really need it: mid-accessibility. Cleaned frequently but not deeply: mid-sanitation. The bonus of getting in a workout: mid-benefit. To its credit, Planet Fitness is the place where I shower most often and for that reason alone, I have to say this is worth it for the shower.
Four: Wet Wipes and Dry Shampoo. Look. I don’t want to hear your judgments. We’ve all been there. When it comes to bang for your buck, nothing beats this combo. You can absolutely go cheap as cheap will go, but I like to indulge my own ego a bit and spring for the organic, non-toxic wipes to really elevate the experience. With a decent dry shampoo, my hair can go a solid week without needing a wash. It helps that I have fully stopped trying to fight whatever my hair is attempting to do with itself and just let it sprawl out in whatever form it chooses to take that day. Truly an unexpectedly freeing perk of slowly becoming feral. Extremely accessible, extremely cheap, technically one of the cleanest options because it’s just in my own van: worth it for the shower.
Three: A Hot Spring. While not the most accessible option, I’m regularly surprised by how cheap a day pass to a hot spring can be. A shower with the added benefit of feeling like you just spent the day at the spa is a beautiful feeling for a dirtbag. Only when faced with a choice between driving half an hour to a truck stop for a $14 shower and a $25-a-day pass to Moccasin Springs just down the road did I realize this was an incredible option. Between a gas station and a spa, it felt impossible to justify a less than $10 difference for such a wildly better experience. Of course, I could have also chosen option #4, but after a certain number of days in a row relying on that option, it’s no longer really an option, is it? I spent an afternoon in scalding hot water getting travel advice from an older couple with a lot of opinions about the South Pacific and tax advice to never buy an annuity on your insurance (whatever the fuck that is). We talked for a while about their 20-something daughter’s wedding drama and we quietly bonded over being Democrats which, in South Dakota, was a treasured find. When you spend as much time alone as I do, even with frequent FaceTimes with your best friend and TikTok-filled group chats, it can still feel incredibly isolating to not speak out loud to anyone, at all, all day. I won’t choose this option if I’m feeling a need to sit quietly, but if not, I sometimes seek a hot spring out specifically to make meaningless chitchat with people I’ll never see again. Beats getting drunk alone in a bar. This option is pretty much always worth it for the shower.
Two: Your Friend’s House. One of the unexpected joys of the van has been the frequency with which I do get to see friends, particularly friends who I wouldn’t otherwise plan an entire trip to go see. I truly don’t know what I would do without the generosity of so many people who have opened their homes to me, sometimes with very little notice. One night, I was driving back north to my mom’s house in Virginia when I started losing steam on I-77. It was one of those long driving days, five hours so far, and not only was driving making me feel gross, it was going to be below freezing in the foothills of my home state that night. I was stubborn and pushed past making a stop in Charlotte before I finally gave in and pulled over to look for a place for the night. My app showed that there were no good options in any reasonable radius; I had trouble even finding a place to sleep on the side of the road for the night. But then, as I zoomed in a little closer to look at all of the little Appalachian towns on Google maps, I found a name I recognized: Wilkesboro. I sent a desperate Instagram DM to a friend from childhood, Erin - who I had not seen in person in over a decade and who just one month prior gave birth to the most adorable baby in the world - and embarrassingly asked if she knew of any places near Wilkesboro I could park for the night because I would be in town in 20 minutes. “Oh! Just come on over, my mom and dad are at the house, we’ll be back from a concert across the street soon!” She invited me in not just for a shower, but for a bed, a beer, and an unfulfilled offer for anything in her fridge. Did I mention she had a baby just a month before I showed up at her house at 10:30 pm? I got to reconnect with a family I hadn’t seen since childhood and have a homey night with old friends thanks to some coincidentally perfect timing. They wouldn’t let me sleep outside in the van that night and I wasn’t going to feign humility and pretend as if I didn’t want central heating. I’m grateful to say this kind of shower is fairly accessible to me and is always worth it.
One: Random Acts of Kindness. The most coveted and elusive shower of them all, yet so gratifying that it can only exist at the top spot: the random act of kindness shower. These offers have come to me only when I have found myself without other options, in need of the dignity of a shower. A simple gut-check will suffice when trying to decipher if a new friend’s offer to shower in their home is a good idea or not. The first time this happened came right after my first truly physically challenging day in the van. After hiking a full day with the woman parked next to me in Glacier National Park, I felt more exhausted than I ever had after a hike. My feet were throbbing, my head hurt from the altitude change, and I could barely keep my eyes open 30 seconds after getting back to the van and laying down. But a little knock right before I passed out woke me up to offer me a shower in my neighbor’s van. I can’t imagine how gross and demoralized I would have felt on top of a debilitating day to have instead woken up in my own sweat still covered in dirt. Getting cleaned up after the hike made me feel like the struggle to finish was an accomplishment rather than something that made me feel gross and worn out. A second perfectly-timed offer for a shower came from a stranger after I had decided to swim in the freezing cold Pacific Ocean. I decided that a wetsuit would be plenty to keep me warm in the water, but the owner of the surf shop insisted that I use their staff shower when I came back to return the suit. She was concerned that I would get too cold later that night in the van if I didn’t take a hot shower sometime before bed. And she was absolutely right to be concerned: on the beach that night, it dropped into the 40s and laying in my freezing bed later in the evening would have made me resentful for going swimming in the first place. Another shower to save both my armpits and my mood.
While I can’t technically offer this option as a formal travel tip, my advice is this: talk to people, make connections, be kind, and you might surprise yourself with how many showers magically come your way. These showers are ethereal and divine and perfectly timed to give you one very clear and important message from the universe: bitch, you stink. These showers are always worth it, may we all be so lucky.