Bathing

I'm used to being pretty dirty, and not showering every day. In fact, I've adjusted to weekly showers. But I've always had an indoor bathroom with water pressure and on-demand hot water. The only exception were days I'd jump in the pond after ultimate frisbee, or days at the beach when we showered with cold water in a wooden stall.

But Now - it's a whole new story. Nux and I really needed to bathe. We brought a solar shower with us - for those of you unfamiliar (I was too), it's a black plastic bag that holds 5 gallons of water. You lay it out in the sun for a few hours and the water gets nice and hot. It's got a small plastic tube that kinks easily and a Teeny Tiny shower head for you to direct to get yourself clean.

The first time we wanted to bathe was too windy for a solar shower. Our reckoning was that building a fire and hauling water out to a bathtub sitting on the property was better, if only because we'd be slightly submerged in warm water, rather than standing in the wind with only a trickle of water on us.

So I built up a fire and carried pond water in 5 gallon buckets to the kitchen and slowly heated it all up. Nux put some pond water directly into the tub, and once we had a decent amount of good Hot water (about 5 gallons), I poured it in and she jumped in real quick. I came back by once more water had heated up to refresh her bath, and by the time she was done I had a bit more water heated to make My bath feel new.

All told, we only had about five inches of water in the tub. It was windy out, so any part of you that wasn't smushed into that water was Chilly! We took the quickest baths of our lives, put on dry clothes, and were glad to feel clean.