Home from the North

September 16-20, 2011
My cousin Carolyn and her family live about 45 minutes north of Chicago in a suburban oasis. On the road there we passed every chain store known to man. When you turn into her neighborhood, you find yourself magically transported to an enchanting rural environment with beautiful homes and beautifully-landscaped yards.

After so many months on the road, it was relaxing to hang out with family for a couple days and “catch up”. Dylan patiently tried to teach me a video game (Madden), but I was hopeless. Both he and his brother Riley are football players, and I was able to watch Riley play in a high school game one morning (while David stayed behind to fix the caster on the trailer).

Our short visit was soon over, and we set the GPS to “home”. We drove from Illinois straight to Indiana and found a WalMart to spend the night. We parked behind the store and semi trucks came and went throughout the night, unloading their WalMart cargo, but I slept through it.
The next day we drove through pretty country in Kentucky and West Virginia. West Virginia was very mountainous where we were. We got to the Beckley WalMart after 4 and parked far from the store. I hiked in and got permission. David rented a movie from Redbox. We had a hard time believing we’d be home the following day.
After dark, a blue pickup truck parked right behind the trailer, uncomfortably close, since we were in a huge, empty parking lot with several street lights. Three people were in the car--a woman and two young men. The woman was reading, presumably by the light of the streetlight. They were there about two hours before leaving. There was only one other RV in the parking lot.

Happy to be home

The phone rang while we were watching the movie. I looked at the number, but it was a 1-800 number, so I didn’t answer.
The next day, as we were driving, my phone rang again around 10 am. It was the same number, so I answered. It was VISA.
“How are you?” the woman asked.
“I’m fine,” I answered.
“I’d like to verify a couple purchases you made.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Did you spend $1.07 at Redbox yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Did you place a mail order purchase at Ann Taylor in New York for $1,946 yesterday?”
“No!”
“We believe your number has been stolen. We’re going to close your account and send you new cards with new numbers.”

We assume someone harvested the number when we rented the movie.
From Beckley we drove about 4 hours through pretty landscape in West Virginia and Virginia and got home in North Carolina around 3:00 to find the house intact and unoccupied except for fat, happy spiders and dead bugs.
We'd been gone 119 days and driven 15,000 miles. Mission accomplished. All in all a great trip!