This week involved a ton of driving and Walmart boondocking to get back from Chicago to our home in Boston, with Shawn handling the bulk of the trip while he was off before staring his new job. Monday morning Bryn caught an Uber into Chicago to start her business trip. After she left Shawn gassed the truck up and started a surprisingly difficult journey to get a Chicago style deep dish. After two failed attempts at places that turned out to be take-and-bake only, he managed to get one from Giordano's.
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| When in Chicago.... |
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| 90 seconds into the visit the bartender told someone she "doesn't know what a spritz is" |
The next was planned to be another short drive to Toledo. However, it turned out that the Walmart that Shawn planned on staying at had stopped allowing overnight parking. He took a small break to grab lunch and workout/shower at the nearby Planet Fitness before moving on to another Walmart in the Toledo area that was supposed to allow overnight parking. However, this one had also recently stopped allowing it, so Shawn decided to bail on Toledo entirely and headed further east to Ashtabula, about twice as far as the original plan for the day. This section involved a bit of Amish country, and a few horse-drawn carriages popped up along the way.
The Walmart in Ashtabula was adjacent to a mall, which contained both a movie theater and a Planet Fitness. This was the closest we've stayed to a Planet Fitness all trip. Shawn rushed to set Percy up in the camper for the night, and managed to make it to the movie theater just in time to catch their last showing on the Super Mario Brothers movie. It wasn't high art, but was very nostalgic and funny. The mall also shared a parking lot with an Applebee's, so Shawn grabbed a late dinner there after the movie ended.
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| Such convenience |
The next morning Shawn took advantage of the incredibly close Planet Fitness to workout and shower, then drove through Pennsylvania into New York. The stop for this evening was a Walmart in Batavia, which did have signs up saying no overnight parking but the manager confirmed it is allowed in one specific corner so Shawn didn't have to scramble for a backup location yet again. For dinner he went to the Applebee's across the street, watching another playoff game there. At this point it's more Applebee's in 24 hours than the previous 20 years.
Thursday was a fairly uneventful drive to a Walmart near Syracuse, with a stop at a Love's Truck Stop along the way to use their free wifi for a while. This Walmart was very popular with boondockers. After dinner Shawn settled in for the last night in the camper and Bryn's return. The next morning she flew in from Chicago and caught an Uber to the Walmart. We split the drive from there to Shawn's parents' house in Vermont, arriving around dinner time.
We spent the majority of Saturday cleaning out the camper and packing up the truck. It took a while, and it felt shocking how much stuff we had considering how little it felt like we had available during the trip. The plan is to sell the camper, so we also cleaned it thoroughly and got it ready for potential buyers.
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| Clearing out the bedroom |
We finished in the early evening, ate dinner and left the camper out of the way on Shawn's parents' land until we can find a buyer. We took off for a late night drive to Boston in an incredibly stuffed Bundra because we wanted to beat some forecasted rain before it could get anything in the truck bed wet. As a bonus this would mean Shawn had a full day at home before starting his new job, instead of arriving the day before like our original plan.
We arrived close to midnight and quickly rushed to unpack the truck bed enough that we could cover the rest with the tonneau cover before the rain started. Percy was immediately very happy to be free in our house, with all the extra space and stability it provides over the camper.
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