vim,
Sorry I didn't see your post till now. I'm not a member of the 'mod squad' here but I have some unique experience with this as my pool (33x17 ig, vinyl w/ Hayward DE filter) is at our vacation house 200 miles away. We visit there once, maybe twice a month in the summer and I like to arrive to a clean pool, and I do.

First, you need to be sure your algae is completely gone. That means, by the tenets of the Book of BBB, you use a FAS-DPD test to find out if your current chlorine levels are fighting anything. And it follows that you also need to know your current CYA level because that controls how much chlorine you need to do anything. Just adding algaecide will do nothing. And anything less than this will almost assure a healthy crop on your return when you'll then have to do this anyway.

This chlorine bottle idea has some legs, I think. I don't do this myself since my Dad, who lives near our pool, visits once a week to do gardening and I have him dump in a gallon of 12.5% chlorine. But the idea sounds good. But also, this is maintenance dosing, it assumes everything's nice to begin with.

Consequently, if you're adding chlorine, you're going to have to circulate. Besides, for reasons I can't verbalize, it just makes me more comfortable knowing the water will circulate once in a while. Something about stagnant water, I guess. So get yourself a timer and run the filter for a couple hours in the afternoon to deal with sun stress, and once more overnight for a couple hours just to stir things up.

Definitely leave the solar cover on and make sure it's tucked down around the edges so the wind doesn't get under it.

Fill your pool real high. I fill right up to just under the coping and, yes, it's over the skimmer. But that's OK because, since you have a maindrain, you should shut off the skimmer. The solar cover will be on so there won't be much to skim anyway and in case the water drops, you won't be sucking air thru the pump.

A maintenance dose of polyquat 60 is highly recommended, assuming you're sure the algae problem's been taken care of otherwise it's a waste of polyquat 60.

Backwash/ clean filter (you don't mention what kind of filter you have). Vacuum to prevent debris from blocking the main drain.

And lastly, if possible, find someone who can at least look in on the pool once in a while (need someone to water the plants?) and give them a number they can reach you at.

But first you've got to take care of your algae problem, otherwise you might as well just shut the pump off and leave.

HTH
C.