Looking for a Portable Camp Shower? Here's Why The Road Shower is The Best
If you’re looking for the best portable camp shower for your car camping, truck camping, or overlanding setup you’re in the right place. After using the Road Shower for several years, in this post we’ll outline the 5 main reasons that it’s the best camping shower on the market.
*(This post contains affiliate links. This means we may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. See our full disclosure.)
5 Reasons The Yakima Road Shower is the Best Portable Camping Shower:
After several years of usage both camping and traveling, it’s clear that there are several factors that make the Road Shower* the ideal portable camping shower:
The Yakima Road Shower can be mounted on the exterior of the vehicle!
This was HUGE, because when truck camping or car camping you always need to maximize the interior space of your vehicle for gear storage or sleeping. The Road Shower can be easily mounted on a roof rack, load bars, or cargo basket outside the vehicle saving you TONs of room.
As it happened, the 7 gallon version of the Yakima Road Shower that we landed on fit perfectly inside the Yakima Load Warrior* cargo basket with the Extension* on our truck’s camper shell. And the installation was SO easy!
2. The Road Shower Is Also a Camping Water Container!
Water storage is always a challenge while car camping, truck camping, or overlanding - you need a water container that’s large enough so that you won’t be constantly refilling, but one that’s not so massive that it weighs you down.
The Yakima Road Shower comes in 4, 7, and 10 gallon capacities which provides options depending on your needs and intended use - after some deliberation and taking the dimensions of each into consideration we settled on the 7 gallon Road Shower 4 model.
For our family of three, 7 gallons is enough water to last 2-3 days before refilling (when being mindful of conserving water). And we use it for EVERYTHING - drinking, showering, cooking, cleaning, etc.
NOTE: You should routinely flush and sterilize any camping water container with a highly diluted bleach mixture, making sure to thoroughly rinse this mixture from the container afterwards with clean water several times before refilling with potable drinking water.
3. The Yakima Road Shower is The Best Pressurized Camping Shower!
This is important for a couple of reasons - especially if your considering using it as an overland shower:
With a pressurized camp shower, there are no mechanical pumps or mechanisms to break. You simply “air up” or pressurize the water tank with a bicycle pump or 12v air compressor, and this pressure is what pushes out the water. And you can completely regulate the flow, just like when using a garden hose at home!
The Road Shower also has the highest pressure rating (65 PSI) of any other pressurized portable camping shower we considered. This means that it requires fewer “air-ups” per fill. In our experience with the 7 gallon model, one good pressurization to 65 psi can completely drain the tank.
It will literally BLAST water out if you need it! If fully pressurized, the Road Shower can shoot a stream of water over 50ft. This is extremely useful for washing mud off of gear (and pets) when needed.
4. The Road Shower’s Feature Set and Build Quality
The water tank is built of aluminum (unlike the ABS or polypropylene plastics of some of the other pressurized camping showers and DIY options). Though this does make it heavier than other options, we felt it was worth the trade-off to know that the tank couldn’t easily be punctured or cracked out on the trail.
The Road Shower includes two water outlets for showering while at camp - one on each end of the tank - allowing you to customize the outputs to your truck camping or car camping needs. We opted to position the standard hose/spray nozzle toward the rear of our truck so it could be easily used for food-prep and kitchen clean up, and then we installed the Road Shower flexible stainless-steel shower head at the front of the tank with a quick release attachment so that showering at camp would be as easy as possible and away from the camp kitchen.
TIP** We highly recommend getting a shower tent* to make bathing and changing in less-than-secluded campsites a little easier
5. The Road Shower Is an Excellent Solar Camp Shower
The Yakima Road Shower’s water tank is painted flat black, so when you’re parked in direct sunlight the sun’s solar radiation will heat the tank and the water inside.
Though it won’t ever get scalding hot, it will heat the water to a comfortable temperature slightly higher than the ambient air temperature outside. And it certainly makes for a more enjoyable bathing experience than a chilly dip in a spring-fed creek or river.
The Road Shower* portable camping shower proved to be a reliable and incredibly valuable part of our truck camping and overlanding setup, and we couldn’t have been happier with its performance as both our camping shower and camping water container.
However, we do realize that the Road Shower may not be in everyone’s budget. So if you’re looking for a more budget-friendly camping shower option, be sure to check out the DIY camping shower we designed and use in our new overlanding setup. And if you’re interested in other ways to maintain good hygiene while camping or traveling, head over to this post.
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