Thunder Bay

It was quite a bit warmer this morning - 54°F (12°C).

The laundromat here at the campground isn't working, so Barb & Dolly at the office told us of a laundromat in Thunder Bay that was fairly new. So I drove into town to Barb’s Laundromat to do laundry. Barb’s is a combination laundromat and movie rental with a Robin’s Donuts next door. This is the first commercial (non-campground) laundry I’ve been to since being in Canada.

The standard washers cost $2.50 CAD ($2.22 US) a load ($2.75 for the super cycle). Those washers took 2 Loonies (the Canadian $1 coin) and 2 quarters. I used one of the triple load washers for our towels which cost $4.25 CAD ($3.77 US) a load. That washer took 2 Toonies (the Canadian $2 coin and 1 quarter). The dryers took quarters and you got 9 minutes for $.50 CAD ($.44 US) and an additional 5 minutes for each additional quarter. The final cost of doing laundry today was $20.75 CAD ($18.44 US). I normally don't go into this much detail for the laundromat, but I thought it might be interesting to show what it cost. In the states I've paid anywhere from $1 to $1.75 a load for a washing machine.

After lunch Mike and I drove over to a branch of the Thunder Bay Public Library in the County Fair Mall to use their wifi service. Since we are visitors and don’t have a library card, we had to show our driver’s licenses to register for the wifi service. After having our information entered in the computer, we were given access codes and passwords to use.

We caught up on e-mail and Mike made a reservation with Coast to Coast for Traveller’s Rest Campground in Winnipeg. I updated some entries on our blog and updated our Google map showing our current location. We had just gotten in the car when it started to rain again. It had been raining off and on all afternoon.

We stopped at a Sunys Energy gas station to fill the tank in the Vue. The attendant at the gas station came over to fill our tank – a full service station!. We got 25.7 liters (6.763 gal) at $1.05 a liter ($3.62 gal) US.

There was a Safeway grocery store across the street from the gas station and we bought a few groceries and 2 cups of coffee at the Starbucks in Safeway before returning to the campground.

It did warm up to 73°F (23°C) this afternoon, but it rained the rest of the afternoon.