Sometimes you just need a change of scenery.
After the year from hell, with everyone stuck at home 24/7/365, with limited entertainment options aside from the TV and our phones, escaping the four walls within which we’ve all been spending almost all of our time was more crucial than ever. Especially in the middle of winter when fresh air is less appealing than usual.
So last month, when my kids’ winter break hit, we got out of dodge. In a Chevy.
Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t get a ton of perks from my life as a high-profile fashion (nope), lifestyle (nope), and parenting (sort of?) influencer (gross) – unless you count angry DMs calling me a cuck and saying I should never have had kids. I have made a few connections over the years, and so once Mom and Buried and I decided that we were going to drive upstate to frigid Lake Placid, I reach out to one to see if I could borrow a car.
And they obliged!
The 2021 Chevrolet Tahoe made the trip a lot easier and infinitely less stressful, and it literally was the highlight of my kids’ winter vacation. (On Instagram, I wrote a little bit about the challenges we had outside of the car.)
That’s a tad insulting after we spent an idyllic afternoon drinking hot chocolate and watching Olympic hopefuls practice ski jumping while snowflakes so delicate they looked fake fell all around us. But apparently that didn’t hold a candle to the seat-back touchscreens that allowed backseat passengers to submit destinations to the car’s navigation system. Stupid kids!
To be fair, our actual car is old, the inside is a cesspool (thanks kids!) and it’s not great in winter weather. We bought it in 2013 when we moved to Raleigh, where winter weather doesn’t exist, and when we moved back to Brooklyn (a mere 16 months later) it came back with us. It’s seen better days, but it gets the job done. Most importantly, it’s paid off! But I did not trust it to safely navigate the snowy, potentially icy roads of upstate New York, and luckily the good people at Chevy allowed me to borrow a 2021 Chevrolet Tahoe in the hopes that I would enjoy the experience. And I did!
But not as much as my kids.
I won’t lie, the Tahoe worked great in Lake Placid but isn’t ideal for the city, where finding parking is hard enough for a smart car, let alone this behemoth. But it definitely made it clear that when we do get a new car, we’re gonna need the bells and whistles – rearview camera, phone charging panel, easy Bluetooth integration, the aforementioned seatback video, and the upfront dashboard video for navigation, music, and more.
I’m definitely gonna miss the cavernous backseat – two rows! – that afforded Mom and Buried and I more space away from our kids than we’ve had in years!
When we weren’t in the car we sat by the fire, strolled Main Street, took a sleigh ride through the woods, ate in one of those weird pods – this one was made out of a ski gondola, which was cool – and generally had a great time.
When we were in the car the kids wouldn’t stop talking about it and touching the screens and telling me how much better it is than our actual car. Which, fair, but also GET A JOB AND BUY YOUR OWN CAR YOU UNGRATEFUL JACKALS! Aside from that, we had a blast.
Not only was Lake Placid a nice change of scenery, being in a new, enormous, vehicle was as well. Sometimes, all you need from a vacation is a change of scenery. That was especially true this year. And that’s exactly what we got in Lake Placid – and, honestly, in the Tahoe too. The kids were so far away! I highly recommend it.
