It’s no secret that the global pandemic brought a lot of people into the Great Outdoors. Because of travel restrictions, stay at home orders and other things, people flocked to the Great Outdoors in greater numbers in 2020 than ever before – and some of those folks decided to go into the Great Outdoors – and stay a while (in other words, go camping). And I have Kampgrounds of America, aka KOA to back me up here: https://koa.com/north-american-camping-report/

It’s safe to assume there were good number or camping “newbies” in 2020. And that’s a good – and bad thing! One of the camping discussion boards I follow on FB recently had an interesting question about water tanks in RVs:

What does everyone use to transport water to your camper without moving it? We are having a hard time finding something big enough to not have to make 12 trips a day we have a couple trips planned this year that do not have a water hookup on site. Last week when we were at Tawas State park, my husband had to pull our camper over to the water hookup to fill up every day and it was a hassle. We already bought a portable grey water tank. Thank you in advance

As you can imagine, the responses were…varied – and many of them aghast. Quite a lot of “How are you using THAT much water? Are you SURE you don’t have a leak?” Lots of water conservation tips were offered, tips on where to buy auxiliary water tanks, suggestions of just using the damn showers and bathrooms in the campgrounds, etc.

Showers are arguably the biggest source of water consumption for RVs and travel trailers. The original poster indicated that she, her husband and two kids were all taking showers – presumably every day. It’s nice that y’all like to be that clean when you’re camping! Diff’rent strokes for different folks, honey!

As for me, I’m a tent camper, so if I take showers when I camp, it’s in the public showers – when they are available (most rustic campgrounds do not have them). And nine times out of 10, I’ll just wait until I’m home to have a shower – and do my best with prodigious applications of deodorant, thoughts and prayers and sponge baths/baby wipe wipe downs until then. I’m not a fan of campground showers, for a variety of reasons, one of which is explained in the below photo:

REasons I dislike public showers:

• Campground/public showers cannot be relied upon to be hot – or even warm
• Cleanliness – they are usually gross.
• Shower heads are typically positioned for Peter Dinklage to have a comfortable shower experience, and pretty much nobody else
• Draftiness and overall creepiness (a frog ogled my husband at a campground shower once).
• The necessity of having to wear flip-flops into public showers tells you everything you need to know (the one time I forgot to bring them on a trip and went into a public shower area barefoot, bam I got foot fungus).
• Did I mention gross?

So yes, I get that the OP might have wanted to avoid public showers and bathrooms – especially during a global pandemic. But on the other side of the token, what goes into a tank – must come out. No amount of thoughts and prayers will make it go away. And if you’re hauling said tanks with your RVs and travel trailers, well – sooner or later, the stuff you put into those tanks will be looking you in the face.

And then the OP posted another question that nobody seemed to want to answer:

What’s a “honey wagon?” LOL

And that’s when I decided to join the conversation!

If you have to ask, you may not like the answer. First off, they don’t transport honey! Though the liquid waste water from your toilets held in these tanks is honey colored, which is where it got its name. Also it sounds nicer than “poop and piss wagon,” lol!

There really is no point in making someone on the Internet sound like an idiot – no matter how idiotic the question is – or how easy it is to just “Google the answer.”

It was actually good that this person made this post – she said she and her family were going to be a bit more conservative with water usage from here on out! And maybe, just maybe – she will come around to the thinking that you really don’t need to take a shower every damn day! After all, if you’re in the Great Outdoors, there is lots of ventilation! 🙂