What a coincidence…
The Snoqualmie Casino is in the direction we need to travel on Wednesday so we are planning on moving the trailer to the casino parking lot tomorrow evening. We need to do laundry really badly! With Kelly working today, Paul has been planning for several days to do the very overdue laundry at the laundromat while having a few ciders at the Whistling Post Saloon next door. The ciders we had a few days ago at the Whistling Post were simply wonderful and they’ve been calling his name ever since.
Kelly drove Paul and the laundry to the Sit ‘n Spin Laundromat just after lunch. Dropping him and the two bags of laundry she went back to the site to ‘work in peace and quiet’ (her words). Paul managed to get almost half of the laundry into the machines when the owner of the little place comes in. He’s somewhat in a huff as someone had ripped his coin changer off the wall last night. Paul and he talked for about 20 minutes as he called repair men, gave Paul change, and discussed what he was going to do about the stolen changer. (The picture at the top is shamelessly stolen from Google’s business entry for the Sit ‘n Spin Laundromat – taken before the theft, obv.) The owner was obviously local builder, carpenter, plumber, something like that, not a wealthy man to be ripped off and not be concerned. He must have told Paul it was a $500 changer 10 times that morning. Having loaded all of the laundry into 5 washers (out of 9), Paul headed to the Whistling Post to have a cider and work on blog entries.
As we said a few days ago the Whistling Post Saloon is located across the street from a fairly busy rail yard. The picture of the pretty Kansas City Southern train engine was taken from the porch in front of the saloon. We also mentioned that the Pacific Crest Trailhead is about 5 miles from town, this being the closest town. There were a couple of hikers doing laundry at the laundromat but clearly the vast majority of the hikers today were at the saloon. The must have been 15-20 backpacks on the front porch and all of their owners were inside. The group eating, drinking, and carrying on inside the saloon were about 80 miles from completing a 2650 mi hike. Needless to say they were at the same time exhausted and pretty wound up. It was a fun group to sit with.
Paul returned to the laundromat several times during the day and ran into the owner a few of those times. The laundromat owner organized with the local gas station to provide quarters to the folks from the laundromat, because frankly, you need something to nibble on and drink while you do your laundry and the gas station would be happy to satisfy that need. Win win.
After work Kelly drove down to have a cider herself. We sat and essentially gossiped about the PCT hikers for a drink imagining what it would have been like if Paul had decided to do that instead of drive around the country in an RV.
As we were backing the car out of our parking space to go pick up the laundry Stratis & Regina, our fellow road trippers, showed up in the parking lot. (Recall we spent a few days in Pittsburgh with Stratis & Regina at the beginning of our trip.) We had been sharing our locations via Google but we certainly didn’t expect to find them at the saloon! We picked up the laundry and went back to the saloon for more ciders.
Stratis & Regina needed a place to camp for the evening, so we set them up in the campsite next to ours which just so happened to be empty. While Stratis & Regina set up their camp we tidied up the trailer a bit. We really didn’t expect company. During all of this activity Paul decided to take the trailer trash to the dumpster. He opened the dumpster lid and low and behold – the coin changer from the laundromat, ripped open, and thrown in with all of the other garbage!!!
We called 911 to report the stolen item immediately. We had to fight with the 911 operator because she couldn’t accept a call without an address and for the life of us we couldn’t find an address for the campground. Once the report was made we were told the officer would be around sometime tomorrow because there aren’t any patrols in this area on a regular basis. The nearest patrol unit doesn’t regularly come up here. We also called the owner of the laundromat on his cell number that he left in the store in case anyone needed change…
Imagine what this guy must be thinking. The guy that has been doing laundry at the laundromat and drinking cider next door all day just HAPPENED TO FIND his stolen coin changer in a dumpster next to his campsite. I guess he figured no one is that dumb?
The owner ended up taking the bent and destroyed changer with him but was fairly doubtful that it would be of any use to anyone. What a coincidence!
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