Doing the Laundry

Doing laundry at home is a pretty simple chore, albeit mundane. Getting it done while on the road can have its challenges as we found out on Saturday.
So, we're in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and we're starting to run out of clean clothes. Time to do laundry. Our GPS finds a laundromat and we obediently follow her directions. We get there to find the place is out of business. That's ok, because a note on the door offers another suggestion that we are welcome to use. It even sort of describes where it is. Our GPS finds it and we head off to the other end of town. Steamboat Springs isn't too big. Great, this one is open.
We need detergent, but to get it we need quarters. No problem. There is a change machine, in fact there are two but one has an out of order sign on it. So we put our one dollar US bills into the good one, but get nothing but a red flashing light. Seems it's broken. So off we traipse to the adjacent ACE hardware store to get a roll of quarters. We should be in business now.
We plug our money into the detergent machine - nothing! But it kept our money! Frank wonders if they sell detergent in ACE, so back he goes, and yes, he is successful, finally.
Amazingly, the next two steps, the washer and the dryer, go very well. One takes credit cards and we have enough quarters for the second.
Now with the free wifi, it will be great to catch up on emails while we wait. No wait, that doesn't work either!
Next time we'll know to go to the laundromat armed with a roll of quarters, our own detergent and a good book. And we won't take for granted the simple luxury of doing laundry at home.

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