At first, my mother being the naturally worried woman she is, needed to be reassured that this vehicle was going to be a safe ride. Once I presented her with the list, the very long list, of safety features she was more than convinced that we’d all be safe and sound. My mother-in-law, being who she was, complained that SUVs are gas guzzlers and would cost us an arm and a leg to travel all that distance in this car. When I showed her that the EPA estimated MPG was 21 City / 27 Hwy, she couldn’t argue that was pretty impressive for an SUV.

We’ve never been on a long trip with BOTH sets of parents so my main concern was being in such close quarters for so long. When we all piled in I was surprised to discover that we weren’t as squished into this SUV as I thought we would be. We had plenty of room for everyone to stretch out and even fit all of my mother-in-law’s SEVEN bags. The drive was 5 hours, so comfort was not something we could afford to be lacking if we all wanted to survive the drive without killing each other.

My parents volunteered to take the 3rd-row seats, they’re 5 feet tall on a good day so they figured it would be easier for them to fit back there. As it turns out, we didn’t need to worry about that anyway as there was plenty of room back there for both of them to really spread out. The only concern we had was that my dad is a bit hard of hearing, and he’s the one who knew where we were going I was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to hear me when I asked him where we needed to go next. The Highlander solved that problem for us too with the Driver Easy Speak system makes it easy. This feature amplifies the driver’s voice to passengers in the back via the rear speakers.

By the time we arrived at our destination, the whole family was talking and laughing. It seemed that our typical road trip issues were minimized by having plenty of space for everyone. Everyone was comfortable and seemed to enjoy the ride. The only thing we had left was to survive the actual vacation and for once it looked like a solid possibility!