HOW TO VISIT CHICAGO WITH AN RV. If you’re looking for an RV Park or Campground in Chicago you don’t have many choices. If you do plan to visit Chicago and want the best option to park an RV near downtown Chicago, IL then you may want to consider boondocking or dry camping at the McCormick Place Truck Marshaling Yard. This is where you would go for truck parking. And, if you plan on rving in Chicago just note there is not an rv campground in Chicago. To find the best Chicago campground or RV parks near Chicago you will have to travel outside of the city. Hope you enjoy this little RV Van Life Adventure!

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Hey, I’m Blogging Brandi! Over 5 years ago, I traded my sticks & bricks lifestyle for a life on wheels. Quit my job, sold my house, and everything else, then bought an RV! First, was a Travel Trailer, then Van Life then Motorhome Living. Now, I help people go from feeling overworked, underpaid, and undervalued to living a life of freedom & financial security they love from the comfort of their home on wheels aka Full Time RV Living!

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Wonder WHY I Live Full Time in an RV? Here’s (MY STORY)…

🚨 UPDATE: My Full Time RV LIFE IS NOT THE SAME! (What Changed?

Here is the video transcript:

So we haven’t passed the state border, that’s the problem. I think we’re crossing right now. They’re getting us on this thing. 

We are we? CHICAGO! We’re in Chicago today. 

[Music]

Okay. 

We got here in about five hours. Today’s Thursday. So yesterday we left Lexington and drove to see the Ark encounter in Williamsburg, Kentucky. Pretty cool. Spent a couple hours there. It’s totally like a theme park. And then we drove up to Chicago and thankfully have some friends in Chicago. That know a place that we could park the Rv for the night. 

[Music]

It’s really cold here. I don’t have any water in the RV so we actually didn’t stay in the RV because if it’s getting to seven degrees below I really, just don’t want to take chances on the pipes freezing up. And so we just haven’t had water in there cause it’s been like a polar vortex. And I don’t know if you saw the stuff about Chicago where they were literally walking outside and they’re clothes were freezing in place. That’s how cold it was here. It was like negative something. I don’t do cold. I mean I’m wearing a dress, I don’t do cold, but I got my rain boots, so hopefully those are going to work out for me. We have the dollar tree meeting today and then we’ll probably venture out into the city and see what’s up. We still have business to do, so we have packages to mail off to take care of that. 

A lot of stuff to do, a lot going on, but excited to meet with dollar tree and see how things go with the product, which is the eight hour energy patches. I know some of Y’all probably heard me talk about that, but it’s not really my company, it’s my boyfriend’s company. But you know, smart people are usually the ones behind, all the great stuff that goes on. So We’re headed to dollar tree now and trying to figure out the transit system. An FYI, Chicago’s really expensive and it’s icy here, so I didn’t want to get a smart car out and drive it. So I know some people will be like, why aren’t you driving the smart car? And it’s like, well I’m not driving the smart car because it’s icy and cold. And, I don’t want to damage my car. My, smart car is my favorite car in the whole world. So I’ll let you know what goes on for the rest of the day. Nothing really exciting happened, happened 

yesterday that I can think of except the tolls. That was one thing I will tell you in Chicago, they have a toll road. I think it was like 93 or 90 it said toll. I didn’t really think about it too much. But the trailer for the smart car actually has wheels that expand out to the side of the car. So it barely fit through the toll to the fact where I had to get out and it took us like 10 minutes to get through the toll bridge, I’m not kidding. I should have took a picture that we probably will never go through another toll again with the RV and the smart car. So we’ll see what happens today. Hopefully dollars tree goes well and uh, yeah. You know, we usually don’t know stuff immediately when we go in there and before I forget, a lot of people want to know about how to park the RV in Chicago. 

I did a lot of research before we came here. So RV parks are actually about an hour outside of the city and no joke, even if you’re in the city, it takes like an hour to get into the city, whether you drive or take the train or anything. And the other part is if you choose to drive, then that means that you gotta pay for parking. Parking here is like $55 and I know you hear all these great noises cause that’s Naveen in the bathroom. Always photo bombing all my videos. But parking here is $55 probably for just one day for your car. No joke. Try to think of alternatives. Even the train system, like the tolls were expensive kind of. They’re like a $1.30 per toll. And the next one was like $2.40 and the next one was $5.35 cents and then the train, they told us was like $8 or $10 a person. And I was like, Dang, y’all be high grossing up here. We’re probably going to take a Lyft if Naveen will get out of the shower and hurry up. 

[Music]

So we are back. In this space, and I know you’re probably like of like Brandi  totally did not go to dollar tree. I went to dollar tree. But I was like, man, I should got to like a video or a picture of the door and then I didn’t get a picture of the door. But I guess when you go to this stuff, like normally you don’t really think about I need to picture of the door, which is totally cool, whatever. But either way, the point of the conversation is we went to meet with dollar tree at the ECRM in Chicago. Some people might’ve said they suck. I’m not going to say they suck. I’m just going to say that they are not our customer. They would if, if I was going to sell a product to them, they’re not my audience. They’re are not my customer, they’re not my client base and you’re going to say like “why would you say that Brandi?”

Okay. So we came all the way out here to Chicago and you have to understand like we sell a patch that is for a dollar and let me find the patch. The patch is over here. Y’All have heard me talk about it. So we were going to put this eight hour energy patch. Okay. And so the energy patch is just like a transdermal nicorette patch that you would put on your skin and it gives you energy. Eight hour energy and you take the patch and you take it out. But it’s just like transdermal put the patch on. It gives you energy. But the difference is that it’s actually like a nice product. You two in a pack, even though it says eight hour, it’s really four and four. okay, so four on one and four on two and then you have the full eight hours if you want to do the full, 

But this isn’t a tutorial, because I’m not trying to do a tutorial on the eight hour energy patches! I’m just trying to tell you what happened.

So anyways, we went to meet with dollar tree, but it got kind of crazy. Let me tell you how the day went. I’m not kidding. This is crazy. This morning we hopped Lyft and we were gonna head to like public transit and it just didn’t work out. So then we were like, okay, well Lyft will be like 30 bucks 

because public transit was suppose to be eight to $10 a person. I was like, Whoa, that’s each way in Chicago. So that was not an option. 

Hopped a Lyft and said, you know what, we need to get there on time. We left here at 6:30 – 7 am and we still didn’t even get downtown until after eight o’clock and here’s the crazy part. So our Lyft driver picked us up here at this lovely condo that my friend Tim was super sweet to let us stay in. Thank you Tim. But uh, we stayed here and parked the Rv over at his gym and he just been amazing at helping host us This week it has been awesome. went on the Lyft ride this morning and it was kind of crazy. So we got kicked out of the Lyft. Who gets kicked out of a Lyft ride for, but just being a normal customer, he was like, Hey, uh, my navigation doesn’t work and you got to go. Is that normal?

I mean, I’m not sure. And, then what’s crazy is when you hit Lyft up they say.. 

Hey do you want us to un-pair you?

Well of course I’d love for you to unpair me, but I’d also like for you to give me my money back when you’re Lyft driver told me  “hey, I can’t go where you’re trying to go because my navigation doesn’t work. So just get out.

I’m from Atlanta. That’s like, I don’t know, but probably like five states away or something. Okay. 

Our Lyft drivers would never put us out on the streets like that. It’s just not normal, I’m not normal! 

and we didn’t have any protection and it was super sketchy and I just can’t believe the Lyft would ever Do that. LYFT YOU SUCK! but, on the positive note. Thankfully there was a lovely Chicagoan in who said, Hey, I’m going to tell you where to go. You should just go across the street. I’m not sure where you’re trying to go over there, but it’s across the street. I know it’s that direction, so just assume nobody’s going to rob you or stab you or anything and you just go across the street so that what we did, 

He said he lived here for five months so I just kind of took him at his word.. He was like “hey I’m pretty sure that Sheraton is across the street, but I’m just not sure.

Lyft driver kicked us out. We went across the street, we went to the Sheraton, went to the ECRM and we went to the dollar tree meeting. And the story just like goes on and on goes, because there is no point to it. Ugh We may or may not stay here tonight.  I’m totally like not sure because it’s going to be, I’m not kidding. It’s going to be like seven degrees, like zero seven? I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a continent that had weather at that low of a temperature. I’m not kidding, I’m not sure that I’ve had weather at that low of a temperature. so you’re probably like how did that dollar tree meeting go right?. You have to know your worth. And if you know your worth, then you would say, “bye bye dollar tree” because you know that that’s not your clientele. So if you know your worth and you know your clientele and you know your audience, then you have to understand who you would and wouldn’t do business with. And as many people as we have met with, we’ve met with Walmart, we’ve met with dollar tree and cvs and Walgreens and we talked to Amazon. 

The list goes on. If you want to have your product in the store is totally feasible, you can do this. It’s not hard. Uh, it does take a little bit of effort and work and maneuvering and figuring out what they want to hear to get your product into their store. But essentially all they want to do is to do a test run and see if your stuff sells and then if it sells, they want to buy more. Right. Okay. Cool. Dollar tree. Out of all the people that we’ve met with, the one thing that we figured out about them is they do not care if it’s a healthy product. They absolutely could care less if it’s toxic. They’re totally cool with it being a toxic product. Which is sketchy. They want something for a cheap price, but they do not care about the quality. So it’s all about price. That’s all they care about is price. And they say like their customers care about value for the price and I’m thinking “it’s a dollar”

“what are they are looking for”

on the flip side, the crazy part is, as an entrepreneur, when I try to offer something at a dollar, I almost get a slap in the face where people say 

“you suck, why would you ever try to sell something for a dollar”

On the other side, if you try to sell something for your worth and you say well it’s not a dollar it is $5 then people are almost more eager to buy because you’re like, oh, I understand. That’s five Bucks. That’s 50 bucks, 500 bucks, whatever it is. The cheaper you are, people perceive you as that. So we probably won’t email them back even if though they said, so if you want to get your stuff into

dollar tree? You can totally do it. 

But, we’re not going to! Bye Bye Dollar tree!