The Perfect Shower?

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I love taking a shower. I love it even more if it's hot. Scalding hot. I love it even more if it's scalding hot with good water pressure.

I've used a lot of showers over the past 14 months. Some have been pretty good. Some have been entirely average. Some have been decidedly less than desirable. If you haven't showered while watching spiders crawl up the walls, you haven't lived. Or maybe you live in a real house.

So that I can semi-objectively communicate a shower's quality to the members of my family, I've come up with a three part rating system. It's simple; I award 1-10 points for each of three categories:
  1. Ambience: How nice is the shower?
  2. Heat: Will it scald me if I turn it all the way up?
  3. Strength: Is the water pressure such that it will leave welts?
We've come across showers that have scored a 10 in one or two categories, but we've never encountered the perfect shower.

Until now.

We are at Yanks RV Resort in Greenfield, California right now. It's a nice RV park (probably top 3 of the ones we've been to), with the wind being the most notable feature. Being in a valley that opens to the ocean, there is a steady 20-30 mph wind from about 10-6 every day.

When we arrive at a new park, Caleb is our bathroom scout (because he's the pickiest and wants to know what he's in for during our stay). It was no different here. When he reported back, he informed us that the bathrooms were single-occupant (rare) and that they had "huge" showers (even more rare).

As it turns out, the park is only 9 years old, and the bathhouses are even newer. They are fully tiled, and Caleb was right; the showers are huge (definitely by campsite shower standards, and even by home shower standards). They have full glass doors (that's a first for us), and they have a knob that both works and has the H/C aligned correctly (that one is 50/50 at the tier of sites we stay at).


This was taken while standing on the tile bench at the far end of the shower

So they quickly scored a 10 for ambience. But how would they perform?

There are 4 showers for men and 4 for women. The first one I tried quickly heated up, earning it a 10 for temperature. 2/3 of the way home. As much as I wanted to, I just couldn't grant it a 10 for pressure. It had a low-flow head, and while it had a number of settings, none of them were strong enough to warrant a 10 except for the one that jets three streams out of the middle and is worthless for showering; that setting doesn't count. Saving water is important, especially in this state, but it doesn't earn a 10. I settled on 8, resulting in a very respectable 28.

I thought that was it. But then we went swimming two days ago. Why does that matter? The pool is across the campground from our RV, so we used showers in a different building after swimming. They were identical to the others, except for the shower head. There was hope!

I knew right when I turned it on. This was it. The flow was strong, and it had wide coverage (not a judged category, but it helps). I had found it! But wait... the flow was so strong that the drain couldn't keep up. I was standing in an inch of water after a few minutes. I couldn't look the other way. I had to dock a point for ambience. I'm pretty flexible on ambience — it's the least important of the three categories to me — but a perfect 10 shower doesn't pool water.

The magic maker; don't be fooled by the mineral build-up, it didn't affect the flow

A 29 isn't bad. It's still the best we've encountered, and I thoroughly enjoyed that shower. But I wasn't done looking. There was still one shower I hadn't tried.

We went to the pool again last night, but I'll be honest; it was kind of an excuse to try the last shower. Again, it was identical to the others inside, and it had the good shower head. Would it drain? You already know the answer. It drained, earning it a perfect 30. After 416 days, I had found the perfect shower.

I have another 10 days to enjoy it, and you'd better believe I will. I have 10 multi-shower days coming up!

And for those wondering: Yes, we have a shower in the RV. It's small, and I'm not. It has a skylight in the middle; that's where my head goes. I've used it many times, but if a campsite shower is hot with passable water pressure, I tend to go with that option.
Location: Yanks RV Resort, 1005 Yanks Way, Greenfield, CA 93927, USA

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