Pokemon Go Still Awkward If You Don't Live On Top of Pokestops

I am currently revisiting Pokemon Go, which I played briefly during its period of launch hype in 2016. Playing the game in Suburbia during a pandemic is in some ways more awkward than playing it from the middle of nowhere back at launch.

I recently showed my kids the random Jurassic World AR feature that Google offers and it occurred to me that there is an app that can do this same trick with Pokemon. The catch being that I would first need to actually catch the Pokemon in question - my account had a starter Pikachu, a Vaporeon that I was fortunate enough to catch on a park outing sometime, and a bunch of random Pidgey's, Rattata, Caterpies, and similar low level filler.  

The gameplay loop remains weird if you are trying to play without multiple Pokestops/Gyms in walking distance. (The most common Pokestops in my neighborhood are at churches that are temporarily shuttered due to coronavirus, which feel like a disrespectful place to be hanging out in the parking lot if you don't even go to that church. The local parks are too crowded to feel safe in right now, so my best "route" is driving between the local post office and Subway and hoping that none of the employees think I'm stalking them.)   

• If you're just passing through, you can tag each Pokestop once for maybe a few Pokeballs - not necessarily enough to catch a single Pokemon. 
• If you hang out at a Pokestop your inventory fills up with potions and gifts while you continue to find monsters to throw balls at as fast as you loot them. 
• If you try to buy more balls with real money, that fails because your inventory is full of potions and gifts so you need to trash them and/or buy more inventory slots first. 
• (Alternately, if you went into lockdown with a well-built roster but no access to Pokestops you will run out of the potions I am trashing and may be yelling at your screen as you read this. I suppose you have to exactly balance the amount of PVE, PVP, and Pokestop visits you do to keep your supplies coming in at exactly the rate you are using them?)

Also, regular balls (most of what I'm getting from stops, also the only ones you can buy for real money) are reasonably likely to catch low combat power (loosely levels) Pokemon who you won't be able to advance unless you are able to catch large numbers of duplicates to obtain candy to use to level them.  My Vaporeon (1600+ CP) is doing okay since basic Eevee's are pretty common but my 16 CP Pikachu isn't going anywhere unless I start winning raids for rare candy (or more likely catch a new one and send my current one to the Professor for his unspecified experiments).  

The good news is that I've hunted down Charmander, Bulbasaur and Vulpix, so I'm getting close to having the kids' favorites for AR photos. This game is obviously for a very specific target audience who either live in or spend a lot of time walking through high density areas. All else equal, I'd rather be spending my time on a game that actually works where I live.