As you may know this year our winter road trip was to Ann Arbor and we got to test drive the 2014 Chevy Traverse during this trip. The good folks at Chevrolet Canada lent us this family friendly SUV for the week and the hubs was the main man behind the sweet set of wheels. It’s no secret that we don’t own a car and that I don’t drive but we do rent cars often for our travels and whilst the hubs navigates the roads I enjoy the perks of the passenger seat. So with this in mind we want to share all about the actual road trip portion with a baby and toddler.
We’ve done a couple road trips with the Little Monkey and more recently we drove around L.A and San Luis Obispo with Baby Boy and Little Monkey. We aren’t pros but we think we got the whole driving with tots things down. For now. We started our journey rather blissfully with well times naps for them both. Which meant that the hubs and I were able to comfortably enjoy our heated seats on that cold winter’s day in February. It was just the four of us on this road trip but the Traverse fits up to 8 people and having driven my parents in this I can definitely attest that two car seats and three adults can comfortably sit in the two rows at the back. That said we actually tested out three people in each row and while it was a tight fit with the two car seats..it was do-able.
We had decided to place the car seats in the second row so that I’d have easy access to the kids from the front of the Traverse. Installing the car seats in the second row was easy enough. No issues at all with plenty of legroom for the front row driver and passenger. We had Baby Boy in a rear facing bucket seat and Little Monkey in a forward facing toddler seat. However if we wanted to access the third row seats we had to remove Baby Boy’s bucket seat (it was the easiest to uninstall) to fold the seat and head to the third row. What this means is that if we had others in the back it would have been a bit of a pain to get in and out at each pitstop. However for our family of four and trunk full of gear… the 2014 Traverse was perfect space wise.
Ofcourse as you can see… we loved the trunk space. We fit our full sized stroller, suitcase, jackets…and mother load of craft beer we brought back for our cellar. If you’re looking for an SUV with plenty of trunk space I don’t think the 2014 Chevy Traverse can be beat! Another area that I was blown away by was the entertainment features. My phone is constantly in need of a charge and I was thrilled with the fact that there was a USB port between the first and second row. I was juiced up the whole way which meant plenty of tweets (thought it was a dreary weekend so I didn’t get too many good instagrams out!). I even did a few diaper changes in the trunk … very easily! Infact we had to make a quick middle of the road pitstop for an emergency change and it was FREEEEZING so I got in the second row with the tots and did the change between the two car seats.. now that’s saying something for the Traverse and my diaper skills!
As a family we enjoyed the MyLink streaming technology, entertainment and navigation options as it made for a hand and stress-free journey. The hubs got his blue tooth synced easily and the rear-seat DVD entertainment system would have been very handy for the kids. Since we did a late night run we limited the screen time to one episode of the Backyardigans. Did I mention that there were wireless headsets? YUP!! The Little Monkey isn’t a fan of headsets unfortunately so we were tortured exposed to the lovely lyrics that came along with the cartoon and peace of mind. If you’re a breastfeeding momma you’ll like to know that I fed baby Boy in every seat in the Traverse! Lol. Just the way things happened…I was comfortable whether I was in the front, stuck between the second row car seats or leisurely spread out in the third row!
When it comes to safety these guys have thought about it all. Not once did we worry about our safety thanks to the many features on offer. This family SUV offers six standard airbags and also included a front seat-mounted centre airbag. We’d never heard of that before. Basically this provides an added level of protection for both driver and front passenger in the event of a side-impact crash. When travelling with kids it’s easy to get distracted (even though we try our best not to!) so we enjoyed the comfort of knowing that the StabiliTrak electronic stability control system had our back. The rear vision camera helped with backing up and parallel parking and the Side Blind Zone Alert actually showed us the sides of the car as well! It’s like our head could rotated 360 degrees! On top of all of this we also had access to OnStar’s Turn-by-Turn Navigation but we didn’t need to use it on this trip as we were all prepared. Even with the crappy weather we had the hubs commented on the great grip and smooth drive the Traverse afforded. Icy conditions got nothing on the 2014 Chevy Traverse!
We’ve been quite lucky that the Little Monkey isn’t a leg swinger so there’s been minimal back seat kicks on airplanes and car rides but if she were there was still a few inches for her to reach the back of the front seat. In addition I was able to quickly hop from front seat to the second row and plant myself for a good part of the journey when Baby Boy needed some entertainment and nourishment. It was a tight fit but I had plenty of legroom and even stretched my legs out for a quick breastfeeding session whilst he was STILL in the car seat.
If you’re wondering about the fuel consumption that’s the one area that we weren’t absolutely thrilled about. On average you can get about 19 miles per gallon with a filled trunk and a family of four. Not shabby but not the greatest either. Overall we were thrilled with the Chevy Traverse and would actually seek it out when we rent a car for our future travels. That trunk! Oh man oh man! The shopping that it can hold! This beauty was great with plenty of space for diaper changes, breastfeeds and beer!
