A week at the Buffalo Chip can be wet and muddy or hot and dry. This year, it was the latter. There are free showers on the campground, but after a few days of hanging around them, paid options started to look good. And I should explain. Half of my interest in the shower house was in running water, but the other half was electricity. Keeping my cell phone charged was a constant battle. Some folks have power ports on their bikes, but I haven’t gotten that far. So I would take a shower and just hang around for an hour or two, which never got the phone fully charged anyway. And can you say *AWKWARD*? Just hanging out while other folks are showering is not my idea of fun, nor is it really socially acceptable, even at The Chip. (Although I did see a bunch of the Miss Chip contestants get gussied up.)

So when a gentleman walked through my campsite one afternoon handing out business cards for a paid shower service just up the campground road, it got my attention. The campground has paid showers near the entrance, but the lines seemed constant and it was a bit of a walk. This other service, Blue Lagoon Showers, was the other direction and a shorter walk. Count me in!

I walked over a bit later just to see if I could find the place. It was just a trailer with six showers on each end, left side for women and right side for men. They were charging $5, but it sounded like a bargain for hot water, privacy, and cleanliness. Don’t know why, but I just struck up a conversation with the operators and wound up chatting for quite a while. I promised to come back and be a customer.

Must have been Tuesday when I started making the short hike on a daily basis. It seemed every time I went to take a shower I’d wind up talking for at least an hour. Just chit chats, but a pleasant way to pass the time. Then it dawned on me that these guys have power in their motor home. Well then, the next time I asked if I could plug in my now dead phone while I was showering (shower area had no power). And now the conversations got even longer so I could get more juice into the machine.

This became a ritual the final few days. I’d take a shower and just hang out until my phone charged. Got to know the guys fairly well. Being from Minnesota too, we had lots to talk about.

Some folks may wonder why you’d pay for a shower, but by the end of the week I considered it a bargain for letting me charge my phone and having a nice operation going. I’d use them again in a heartbeat. I hope they return again next year.