Traveling Tub : A Couple of Campers Figure Out a Way to Get Themselves in Hot Water

Everybody was staring at Nick Waite and Vance Morris at San Clemente State Beach Saturday, and from all appearances the two men weren’t the least bit uncomfortable about it.

Waite and Morris just grinned as they sipped their beer, and gawked back at those who paused to marvel.

It’s not every day, after all, that beachgoers see a fully operational hot tub on wheels just yards from the splashing surf.

“It’s really funny to watch people’s expressions,” said Waite’s wife, Cecilia, as she snuggled by her husband in the 98-degree swirling water in the Jacuzzi.

Camping Out in Style

To some, the idea of a hot tub mounted on a trailer may be far-fetched, but for Waite and Morris it’s simply a matter of taking along something they enjoy when they camp out.

The two men, friends since high school, live next door to each other in Orange. Each has a Jacuzzi at home. And that is where they schemed to build the portable 200-gallon hot tub they pull behind Waite’s recreational vehicle whenever they travel.

“We were sitting around one day and we sort of told each other, ‘Wow, this is great! Wouldn’t it be fun to have one wherever we went?’ That’s how we got the idea to build it,” said Waite, a paramedic for the Newport Beach Fire Department.

Morris, 37, just happened to have a trailer. Waite, 35, gathered some materials, including the hot tub, and soon the neighborhood started helping out with the project. That was five months ago.

Spent About $15,000

“We scratched together a lot of stuff and we called in a lot of favors,” Waite said.

The two say they spent about $15,000 to put together their traveling hot tub.

The trailer has a small platform around the tub. A lounge chair can easily be placed on it while an umbrella hides the sun. A generator runs the water heater. Morris says it costs less than $5 an hour to keep the Jacuzzi heated.

The Memorial Day weekend outing to San Clemente State Park was the second time other campers have been exposed to the portable hot tub, although Waite and Morris have taken it on other camping trips to the desert.

“The first time we took it out, it was 37 degrees out there,” Morris said.

“And one time we were sitting in it at the desert . . . near Victorville,” Waite added. “We attracted about 200 sheep. We had it sitting in the middle of a sheep herd.”

‘Nearly Had a Wreck’

Park Ranger Cheryl Wilson has become a friend of Waite and Morris since she first saw the hot tub at the park.

“The first time I saw it, I nearly had a wreck. I was really surprised to see something like that out here,” said Wilson, who looked like she wanted to shed her uniform and service revolver and climb into the tub herself.

While the Waites and Morris soaked in the tub late Saturday afternoon, the gawkers paraded past campsite 94. Two teen-age boys, surfboards under their arms as they headed to ride the afternoon’s last waves, did not slow their pace when they walked by the tub. But one hesitated a few yards past the campsite and turned back one last time.

“That’s definitely bitchin,’ ” he said.