It was 9.30am when my wife Katie and I arrived at Capt’n Squeeky’s Coin-Op Laundromat. There were already six people inside, hauling around plastic baskets or hovering over vibrating machines. Several bulletin boards hung near the door.

We wandered the aisles with our two weeks worth of dirty clothes, trying to come to terms with the different machines and decide which ones looked less than 20 years old and which looked like they’d shred your favorite underwear. A red faced man with a trucker hat spoke up from the corner.

“You only need to pay 25 cents for the drier, and that gets you about five minutes,” he told us from across the room. His trucker hat was plain grey. It didn’t have a logo or catchy saying or otherwise. Weren’t trucker hats made to allow people to show their love for things like John Deere and Patagonia? I wondered what this guy was into, with his non-denominational trucker hat, if it wasn’t green tractors or saving the world by buying expensive outdoor clothing. Whatever it was, he was up to speed on the intricacies of Capt’n Squeeky’s.

“In my experience you need about a dollar to get your clothes dry,” he added. “And don’t bother with the tan driers on the end. With those you’ll pay about five dollars and come out with wet clothes.” Sage advice.

“Thanks for the laundromat courtesy,” Katie said.

The flamingo may have just been painted on the wall and we weren’t exactly in a tropical locale, but I was perfectly happy.

I recently went on a year long journey, and discovered something that surprised me.

When planning a trip with my family around South America, the U.S. and Australia, the anticipation was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. The planning, even with the challenge of piecing together an entire year of travel and transport, was exciting. Should we go to Patagonia? Yes, pack the hiking boots. Yellowstone and its pristine valleys where the buffalo roam? Absolutely. Iguazu Falls, the Canadian Rockies, Northern Californian redwood trees the size of a moon rockets… And don’t forget ground zero in New York City, Wrigley Field in Chicago for baseball, and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. for a little history. It was kind of like being on a shopping spree at the local supermarket, and being able to fill your cart full of ice cream and liquor. And only the best stuff too, like Triple Caramel Chunk and Patrón.

And yet, after seven months on the road sometimes those things you came for no longer seemed interesting. Those places you daydreamed about when planning the trip now felt tedious, and you could be damned if you were going to turn off at that next scenic overlook.

This was unexpected. With enough time on the road, however, we came across a solution. We found places that offered not only a short respite from the road, but more than that. They offer a way to get to know a place in a different way. See people being people, smashing out a load of whites or sitting down to read this morning’s local rag. This makes you feel like you are part of something, part of a community rather than this transient thing, your energy moving aimlessly from place to place and never belonging.

If ever you find yourself feeling travel weary as we did, I suggest you start by seeking solace at the local laundromat.

Katie got down to business of picking a winning machine while I checked out the bulletin boards. You can tell a lot about a town from the laundromat bulletin boards. They are as interesting, if not more so, than any tourist information center.

Alongside cards from the local barber called Ocean Waves and the local Feed & Seed, someone named Nick was having a tool sale. On offer was a welder that came with ‘ lots of stuff’, and a ‘compleat set’ of tile working tools. A bit of intrigue is a good marketing tactic. I had absolutely no use for a welder, but I could see buying it just to find out what was included with the stuff. And there was lots of it to boot. Nick’s little advert had seen a lot of action — there was only one phone number stub left. The posting for Narcotics Anonymous, however, was looking sad and untouched.

There were other things for sale, including a couple tow-behind campers and something called a Sparrow Hawk Flute. The flute was made of walnut and came with instructions.

Next to an advertisement for HIV testing and a full page devoted ‘The Secrets of Astrology Revealed’, the lyrics to a song called ‘Leader of the Laundromat’ were tacked to the wall.

“My folks were always putting her down (down, down). Because her laundry always came back brown (brown, brown)”

The breadth of human creativity never fails to amaze me. How can we as a species ever fail?

A guy named Chuck posted a handwritten note: ‘I carry a stool & walk around town’, and if you wanted to join you could, but had to come find him. The only clues as to where he might be is that he has a long white beard.

I decided I would look for Chuck on my way to the library. I left Katie with a stack of quarters and walked off down Highway 101.

Waldport, Oregon, population 2,080 people, sits on the Pacific Ocean at the base of a long bridge crossing the Alsea River. It’s got three banks, an excellent grocery store called Ray’s that was holding something called Meat Madness when we were in town, and at least four cannabis shops. I wondered if the quality grocery store, easy availability of cannabis, and the lonely Narcotics Anonymous bulletin board posting were somehow related.

I stopped for coffee at Espresso 101, one of those little huts in the corner of a parking lot that sell middling coffee to people who don’t want to get out of their car. I paid $2 for a watery cup of drip with cream and kept walking.

As I walked, I thought back to the laundromat. It was one of the nicer ones I’d been in. The one on Sydney Road in Melbourne looked like a pretty grim and potentially interesting place to spend time. We used to go to one in Buenos Aires that was perpetually dark — making it difficult to determine whether your clothes actually got clean — and was run by a crabby old woman in a housecoat. It had a bench you could sit on while waiting that looked like it had been stolen from the local park. There’s a laundromat at the Grand Canyon where you can watch elk wandering by while waiting for the spin cycle to finish. The Squeeky, as I’d like to think the locals called it, had a tropical motif, song lyrics about dirty clothes on the bulletin board, and some newish machines. Other than the tan driers.

They were all memorable spots in their own right, full of real people and warmth and the smell of soft clothes.

Two blocks down Hemlock Street and I had not yet encountered Chuck, but had arrived at my destination: the Waldport Public Library.

The Waldport Public Library was staffed by a couple of exceptionally enthusiastic people. The day before, one of them had convinced us to return for a day-long kids festival celebrating superheroes, comics, and costumes. The events took place at venues all along the main street, and I spent my time sitting in the library while my two boys were off learning how to design and write a comic strip.

I’d been at the library two days in a row. It was air conditioned and the internet worked, two key elements of any place where you’re seeking travel respite.

I had spent enough time there that I was starting to recognize some of the regulars. There was the guy with a helmet of white hair, white beard and white eyebrows so bushy that you can hardly see his eyes. He came in to read the paper and fit the general description of Chuck, save for the fact that he was not carrying a stool. And he wasn’t out walking around. There was the guy in the electric wheelchair that has an enormous orange flag attached. A skinny fellow was always sleeping in a chair in the corner.

Libraries are also great because they are filled with enough curiosity arousing things — books about farts and superheroes called Underwear Man — to make even the most screen-shackled youngster stop drooling for a few moments. Or, in the case of my kids, screen deprived youngsters. Since we were on a road trip and lived in a tent, the brain candy store of the internet was a usually inaccessible treat.

We had taken to stopping in libraries all over the country, for the brain candy and because they were always welcoming. They are normally filled with people that are happy to have us, which was often exactly what we needed.

Zion National Park is a remarkable place, a vast winding canyon forged by the Virgin River. We spent a few days there in August, trying to enjoy its splendors despite 100 degree heat. You can hike for miles through the Narrows, a slot canyon with 1,000 foot high walls and a cold stream at the bottom.

You can climb to the dizzying Angel’s Landing, a rocky plateau only accessible via a thin ridge that makes you momentarily forget the heat because you’re fearful of falling to your death.

And you can endure multiple nights of having your campsite scattered to the blackbirds by the hot wind that blows out of the canyon every night.

After a couple days of doing this, and doing similar the week before at a different National Park… and the week before that, one needs a break.

”I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” — Jorge Luis Borges

Paradise doesn’t have to be some kind of utopian dream, a white sand beach with crystalline waters and bottomless margaritas. Sometimes it can simply be what you need at that moment. When you are on a long journey, sometimes what you need is simple quiet and comfort, and to be away from the constant pull of the road or the next trailhead. And air conditioning, particularly when it is 100 degrees outside and your other option is a tent or crowding beneath the shade of a tree.

Our paradise: the Springdale Public Library, a grand spot in its own right, located just outside Zion. It was a quiet, empty maze of books, just us and the librarian.

We relaxed in the comfortable chairs for a while, out of the heat and wind. Libraries excel at being accommodating. If you want to use the internet while eating a sandwich, you can. You can eagerly comb the shelves doing research and chat up the librarians. If, as I did, you want to sit idly and look out the window while drinking cold water, you are welcome to do that as well.

As we were leaving, Katie struck up a conversation with the librarian. The friendly woman must have seen it in our faces that were worn, because she told Katie to wait a moment, retreated into the depths of the library, and returned with a bag. It was full of fresh vegetables. They were grown, she told us, in the garden of one of the library staff. It was a small gift, but it completely flipped our switch.

Nature can humble you in many ways. Like thinking about the enormity of a place like Zion, a massive rift in the world, all caused by a river, some weather, and time. Or listening to cool water cascading down the sandstone walls that had just emerged from the rock, 4,000 years after seeping into the soil many miles to the north— these things make you ponder your significance as a human.

And then a perfect stranger gives you a smile and a gift, and it makes you feel happy to be human once again, for a little while.

My boys arrived at the Waldport Library wearing Batman helmets made of foam. When people start putting on the foam helmets, it means you need to either refill your drink or leave. So we left, and walked down the street to the Waldport Fire Station. It was lunchtime, and the fire department was busy serving up free grilled hot dogs to a bunch of kids in costumes.

On our walk there, we noticed a disheveled guy in a dirty green sweatshirt sitting outside the Dollar General. He was holding a sign that said ‘leftovers’. It seemed a shame that he was sitting there looking rough and scraping for leftovers when two blocks away the fire department was giving away free hot dogs and chips to a bunch of kids dressed like Supergirl and other unidentifiable superheroes. So when Katie opted to forego her hot dog, we decided to give hers to the guy in the sweatshirt. The boys ran off with a hot dog in hand.

Thinking back to that time, where I sat contentedly on a curb, eating my hot dog with extra mustard and watching Oscar choking on ketchup, it strikes me that it was a perfectly mundane scene, but we were perfectly happy. When you travel for long stretches, I think sometimes you need some of the mundanity of regular life to appreciate that next scenic overlook, next national park, next historical site.

Maybe we’d had sensory overload from one too many five-star tourist attractions, or desensitization because we’d covered so much ground that each mountain vista or sparkling coastline looks a lot like the last one. Our solution next time? Take a break from it all, and enjoy the break. Talk with the librarian about her vegetable garden. Dress up like Batman. Throw in a couple loads. Give the guy a hotdog. Or go take a walk with Chuck, if you can find him.