It sounds like every outdoor adventurer’s fantasy, right? Sell it all, gas up the RV, pack the Starlink and hit the open roads of America without ever looking back. Cue Willie Nelson, cue Instagram filters, cue smug “offgrid” hashtags. Oh, if only traveling full-time in a motorhome were that cut and dry!
But here’s what none of those van life content creators are really going to post about: two weeks into your grand American backroads adventure and you’ve gone full feral hippie—wildly hairy legs, greasy ponytail, and the creeping suspicion that you smell of organic “Deodorant” and campfire smoke. You may smell as bad as your vacation dog. Here’s the truth no salesman at RV World will ever tell you—basic womanly upkeep becomes a full-contact sport when your entire bathroom is the size of a Costco shopping cart. And when you are camping in the snow for a week, even with the RV heater going full blast, it’s never quite warm enough when you submerge yourself in that lukewarm motorhome shower.
The Great American Road Trip, Now With 67% More Stubble
When it comes to traveling full-time in a motorhome, showering? That means cramming yourself into a glorified phone booth, rationing water like it’s 1849 and you’re on the Oregon Trail, and praying you don’t scald your left butt cheek when the water temp suddenly swings. Washing your hair? Better hope you can pull it off with three ounces of shampoo and some questionable water pressure. And that is in the summer months. If you are still living your best life on the backroads of America somewhere outside of Deadhorse, Alaska and we are coming into the autumn season, that on-demand tankless water heater has a mind of its own. Camping in Silver Lake, California, for ten days with snow predicted almost every day, even though it’s October? Who in their right mind wants to wash their smelly camper’s hair right now!
I’ll just embrace that campfire smell until the sun comes out again. Caution: This is not a Pantene commercial. Traveling full-time in a motorhome can be a life-changing adventure where you find yourself. Or you can find yourself really missing that jacuzzi tub at home.
Hairy Legs, Tiny Tanks, and the Harsh Truth About RV Glamour
Shaving your legs? Oh, that’s the main event. Picture a Cirque du Soleil audition crossed with a Saw movie. You’re twisted into a yoga pose that would make your chiropractor weep, one slip away from amputating an ankle, and all while trying not to waste precious drops of water because the RV tank holds just 100 gallons—and if you’re lucky, you get to dump and refill every seven days.
Do you have any idea the angst of trying to shave your legs in a tiny 3 by 3 foot motorhome shower for two summer months? At some point on our cross-country road trip, I think it was a sweltering hot Kentucky bluegrass summer day, I just gave up and brought a bucket outside and started shaving my legs in a bucket. Did I look like J.D. Vance’s redneck neighbor down in the holler? Possibly, but at least I was not a hairy hippie anymore.
RV Life: Come for the Freedom, Stay for the Razor Burn
Motorhome travel and lifestyle can have its ups and downs. Mostly the shenanigans we get into on the backroads of America are all rainbows and butterflies, hiking trails and Jeep adventures. Yet sometimes I get a little tired of being a smelly camper. Especially when I start to feel more Cortney Love and less Kristi Nome. When my legs start to look like my dogs, it’s time to come up with some options.
Obviously, laser hair removal would be the way to go, but that, my girlfriend, will run you between $400 and $3,200 per session. Most women need 6-10 sessions to be a sexy woman with hairless legs for the rest of their lives. Maybe that is doable for the Kardasheians but not for this working-class American. I think if I scimp and save, I can afford to get one armpit done but that is going to be one unusual look. ChatGPT just told me I’m racist for asking who the “dirtiest liberal hippie celebrity in Hollywood” is. Apparently, calling someone a dirty hippie is no longer PC. Who knew? Not only am I now being judged by my liberal family members—but by AI, too! Fabulous. So if you’re not quite ready to sell a kidney for laser hair removal, what can a girl do?
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Smooth Legs in 34 Feet
God bless America, here in the year 2025, you can purchase an at-home hair removal laser for between $150 and $600. But do they work? Well, the answer is…Maybe? I received the Nood at-home permanent hair removal for Christmas. I used it diligently once a week for seven weeks on well, every body part basically. I would sit in the backyard in early spring, soaking up some much-needed Vitamin D, sipping on crisp and cold Pinot Grigio, wearing my Nood provided sporty sunglasses and praying the hair away. In this day and age, everyone needs to find self-care care and last spring, dreaming of having a hairless body on our upcoming vacation, this was mine.
I felt like, for the first few weeks, my facial hair and armpit hair did not grow back. Using this at-home laser device on my legs took forever and I would usually do it in the backyard during happy hour with a glass of wine in one hand, but man, did I find it boring! I asked for an at-home hair removal device specifically to make RV travel and female hygiene upkeep easier on myself, yet I feel like there has to be a better way, besides spending an arm and a leg to have this done at Laseraway in Huntington Beach.
As we sit here in California and approach the autumn season and another 30-day motorhome road trip sits on the horizon, I’m back at it in the backyard with the pinot grigio, the sporty tinted sunglasses and my at-home laser gun. My neighbors must really wonder about me some days. I want to try my best to have as hairless of a vacation as I can! Traveling full-time in a motorhome means starting your vacation prep a month in advance and yes, that can even reflect on your womanly self-care.
Spoiler alert: Wanderlust also comes with razor burn
Honestly, at this point, when we a
re camping in the summertime, I’ve found it’s just easier to shave my legs in a bucket outside the motor home in the warm summertime months. I know, I look like a redneck. I am okay with that if it keeps me from throwing out my back while trying to perform The KOA Kampground Cobra in the tub.
So what about the beautiful orange and yellow autumn months? The Arctic Bucket Bath is just not practical in October. There has got to be a better way! When you head to the majestic Alpine forests of the Eastern Sierra for the month of October, it’s way too cold for the Jack Frost Bucket Shave Challenge. I can’t deal with the Yeti-Approved Bucket Shave anytime after Labor Day.
What can you do? Just be a long-haired hippie Sasquatch girl for a month? I don’t think so, Willow. This conservative woman might embrace gay rights and want to protect our national lands but when it comes to looking like a dreadlocked hippie chick with a nose ring and a nasty weed smell coming out of her pores. No, thank you. This is not Burning Man and I’m not Susan Sarandon.
Who needs yoga when shaving your legs in an RV counts as core work?
Shaving one’s legs in an RV shower can feel like a yoga workout, one complete with The Graywater Goddess pose and Shavasana, But With Shampoo in Your Eye. It’s all part of the fun of traveling full-time in a motorhome. RV showers are basically the size of a large dog crate. Most of the campsites we stay at don’t have hook-ups, so most of the time we have to do a Navy shower.
For the uninitiated, a navy shower is not a cute Pinterest bathroom remodel. It’s a water-saving shower strategy dreamed up by sailors who had to conserve every drop at sea — and, apparently, by RVers who are one bad rinse away from emptying their 100-gallon tank in a single shampoo session or teenage girls who have to wash their hair every two days, yes, even while camping.
Here’s the drill:
- Turn on the water. Get yourself wet.
- Turn it OFF. Yep, mid-shower. Stand there, shivering like you’re in a cryotherapy chamber, and frantically lather up with shampoo, conditioner, and face wash. Soap up your legs, try out The Slippery Warrior pose and try to shave without severing anything important.
- Turn the water back on. Rinse off as quickly as humanly possible, trying not to sob while the water pressure drops to “geriatric garden hose” mode.
- Turn the water OFF again. Curse quietly. As you stand there, possibly bleeding and definitely cursing early winter, just remember that cold exposure burns brown fat! Step out of that freezing cold shower and feel skinnier.
And voilà — you’ve just completed a navy shower. It’s basically CrossFit for hygiene: short bursts of activity, followed by cursing, sweat, sobbing and regret.
When it comes down to traveling full-time in a motorhome, let me tell you one big secret of RV lifestyle hygiene: Know which areas you will be staying in that have fantastic day spas with showers and amazing-smelling products. The Double Eagle in Silver Lake, California, is the absolute best for all of these reasons. When we do have plans to stay at RV parks with hookups on our cross-country journeys, I research in advance which ones have shower facilities. I plan on washing my hair and having a “Full shower” on those days so that I can shave my legs without having to have a core workout.
Traveling full-time in a motorhome is the best way to see this grand country of ours with your friends, family and smelly vacation dog. But I’m sure you want to be a little cleaner and put-together than this vacation mutt. It’s possible, it’s not easy, but no part of this motorhome lifestyle is!
