While driving through a hot Santa Fe day in the middle of August we began reminiscing about the time we survived an Arizona summer while living in a trailer. It was back in 2017 and we had already been living in our little teardrop travel trailer for about a year.

We used to do plenty of crazy things but this one was extra insane. Even though we knew we would be living in a trailer without AC we still agreed to a travel PT contract job that placed us in the desert during its hottest season.

The weather would typically hit over the 100s at night and it would only cool down to the 80s some weeks. Add that into a humid monsoon season and we were living in an oven.

Even with the heat we had an amazing time. Okay, maybe not always amazing but overall it was a lot of fun.

The RV Resort

There is a plus side to living in a trailer during an Arizona summer and that's the emptiness of RV parks. We found a perfect RV resort called De Anza that was only a twenty-minute drive from where we were working.

Turns out everyone else is too sane to try to rough it in a hot desert so we had an entire RV resort all to ourselves. It was a nice surprise!

The owners gave us a spot that had one of the only trees and even with the tree being medium size, it probably saved our butts big time. The shade it did provide gave us what little reprieve was possible.

Since our trailer would get decently hot during the day, we mostly hung out in the empty lodge. There was so much space Philip could watch sports in one room while Kelsey worked on the blog in another room.

The main rooms had air conditioning but a lot of the adjunct spaces did not so we would work out in the gym sweating away or play basketball on the indoor court while trying not to die of heat exhaustion.

The best aspect by far and our favorite past time was the pool. Really the pool is how we survived.

We got the whole pool to ourselves and would jump in and even use it on work days. During the weekends most of our time was spent playing together in the pool and it kept us from feeling the constant heat.

Fun Times with a Swamp Cooler

We are not sure if you have ever heard of a swamp cooler but it's more or less a fan with a water component that is meant to make the air even cooler. Since the trailer had no A/C we needed something to combat the Arizona heat.

A portable swamp cooler was our best option as it would be a bit cooler than a typical fan but fit well in our small living space. It worked great...until it didn't.

When we first started using the swamp cooler it felt like a saving grace. We were giddy with excitement at feeling even a silver of coolness.

Some of our enjoyment was short lived because a swamp cooler needs a dry environment to work. Once monsoon season came in and the humidity went up the cool air became a thing of the past.

We still had the fan aspect but that can only do so much and it was often too humid for the cooler to work. Plus there was a bit of an annoyance with having to clean it all the time.

The water was so bad in Amado that the minerals would harden and block the water in the swamp cooler. About once a week we would have to empty, and then deep clean the unit which we mostly did at night to avoid the heat as much as possible.

Would We Do It Again?

Absolutely.

We needed housing for our job contract, and living in a trailer during the summer was our best bet. However, we would also do it again because it was a lot of fun.

It was an experience that added in so many fun memories. Even the bad times were entertaining.

There were several nights laying in bed together over the blankets trying not to move because we were so hot from the warm weather. Just catching up on our day or laughing about our situation.

For anyone worried about the cats, they LOVED the heat. Even with it being 83* in the trailer, they would lay in the sun.

We made sure to give them extra water but we are pretty sure they loved the heat more than we did. They would even lay on us at night when we were sweating away in bed, adding even more heat to our already hot situation.