Road Trippin'

Brian and I are members of REI. For those of you unfortunate enough to not know what that is, it is the best of outdoor gear stores in the world. Every once in a while, REI has a huge sale (called Garage Sale, Scratch and Dent Sale, Return Sale, etc.) open only to members. When we lived out west, we went to these religiously and purchased great gear for astronomically low prices. There are no REIs in New York, which is one of the only regrets about living here (besides being away from my family in the West). To make up for this huge loss, we make a roadtrip once or twice a year to the sales in nearby states. Our favorite place nearby to go for the Sale is Boston. There are 4 REIs there, all of which have pretty good, reasonably priced stuff. We try to make it to 3 in one day, making for a pretty crazy, fun day.

We are cheap travelers. We camp in our car. We have a Subaru Forester, so a twin mattress fits in the car when we put the seats down. We sleep comfortably on that in church parking lots and rest stops (whatever's closest). We drove over to Boston on a Friday night and slept in a church parking lot somewhere halfway through the state, woke up early and drove the rest of the way to Reading, MA to wait in line.

There were some crazies in the front of the line who had literally camped overnight for the sale. We're not in that much of a need of gear, so we're not that hardcore. We waited for about 2 hours, and as always, met some great people. We met Nichole, (in the green jacket) who works for Trek Bikes planning expensive bike tours for overly-rich people (pretty sweet gig, in my opinion), and also works overnights as a nanny specializing in multiple children. Right now she's putting two newborn twins on an overnight schedule. This girl was awesome. We plan to visit her on future Boston visits.
Anyway, as long waits always do, the wait finally came to an end, and the onslaught began. It was actually hilarious to see people literally running to the piles of stuff awaiting us. I tried to get a picture of all of it, but this picture only shows about half of it. they were still setting it out. There are crazy hoarders at these sales who grab as much as they can, then gather as a group and slowly go through it all. It's fun. We didn't spend too much time at this sale, but we did get some great finds here.
After the Reading sale, we headed to Framingham (my favorite). The crowd had died down by the time we arrived, and they were cutting the prices in half, so we arrived just in time. We spent a considerable amount of time here, just combing through everything. Afterward, we made our way to the Boston REI. This is the best place to go last, because their prices are expensive at first, but by the time we got there, the prices were going down. It was such a fun day. We filled our car with the gear, and feeling satisfied, set out for the rest of a wonderful vacation.

Here's a list of what we got:

brand new Chaco sandals: original price: $80.00, our price: $9.83
Cambelback daypack: original price: $85.00, our price: $4.83
Sanuk flip flops: original price: $17.83, our price: $4.83
Vibram 5 fingers for water: original price: $99.95, our price: $9.83
Soloman hiking shoes: original price: $112.00, our price: $9.83
Mountain Hardware (our favorite outdoor gear brand, because their stuff really is tough) tshirt: original price: $25, our price: $4.83
REI fleece pant: original price: $30.00, our price: $3.83
Mountain Hardware shell: original price: $149.93, our price: $26.83
REI Half Dome tent (for my sister): original price: $150.00, our price: $29.83
Thermarest lightweight sleeping pad (for a friend): original price: $55.00, our price: $5.83
brand new Chaco Shoes: original price: $115.00, our price: $12.83
Northface women's fleece jacket: original price: $44.99, our price: $4.83
Arcteryx women's fleece: original price: $175.00, our price: $4.83
REI flannel pajama pant: original price: $29.50, our price: $2.83
Smartwool leggings: original price: $75.00, our price: $4.83
REI silk leggings: original price: $32.50, our price: $1.83
Teva water shoes: our price: $12.83
REI sleeping pad: original price: $74.50, our price: $4.83
Thermarest inflatable pillow: original price: $29.95, our price: $.83
Alps inflatable pillow: our price: $2.83
Vibram five fingers: original price: $125.00, our price: $8.83
medium stuff sack: our price: $.83
Pacific Outdoor full-length sleeping pad: original price: $68.00, our price: $8.83
small stuff sack: our price: $.83
Smartwool socks: $.83
Waterproof electronics bag: original price: $12.50, our price: $.83
Camelback daypack: original price: $90.00, our price: $8.83
Ruffwear dog pack: original price: $74.50, our price: $15.83
REI dog pack: original price: $54.50, our price: $7.83
Mountain Hardware daypack: original price: $95.00, our price: $5.83

Some of these things will be sold on eBay, and some of these things need minor help (all totally do-able with sewing). The coolest part is that we only actually spent $20 of our own money at the sales. We used our Brian's REI Divident (we have REI CCs (which we use as debit cards), and get 1% back for REI gear), and I returned a pair of Keens that died prematurely, and we used that money to pay for almost all of the rest. So it wasn't just cheap, it was practically free. It was so much fun!

Then we stewed around downtown boston, and I saw my first live magic show!

 This guy get himself loose from a straight jacket with rope tied to himself upside-down. It seems complicated, but I think the gravity made this trick possible.










We spent the night at a local church, and to our surprise, that church was across the street from the Boston temple! I fell in love with this temple right away. The stained-glass windows and the architecture were very different and beautiful.

We did the freedom trail, stewed around parts of the Minuteman trail (which we plan to bike in the spring), and Brian got some nice photos.

On our way across the Minuteman trail, we had dinner on our campstove at a local historical site:

We get one of these pictures from every roadtrip we go on. This one was in front of a revolution-aged house. It was neat. The trip was much-needed. We've been doing so much canning and storing of food, we needed this trip. It was so much fun!