Road Tripping with the Crossover SUV Chevy Equinox

This is article one of a two-part series covering my recent road trips with Chevrolet cars. In this article, I’ll cover the Chevrolet Equinox crossover SUV on a road trip to Phoenix.  In the next article, a road trip from Denver to Glenwood Springs in a Chevrolet Traverse.

Earlier in June, Chevrolet lent me an Equinox crossover SUV to take on the road…between Los Angeles and Phoenix.  My daughter had a volleyball tournament in Phoenix and it seemed like the perfect time to see what the Equinox can do.

The Chevrolet Equinox Crossover SUV

I love cars with color.  My current car and the last two cars have all been red.  I get a bit bored with the flood of white, black, and silver cars in parking lots and out on the road.

So when the Chevy Equinox crossover SUV arrived, I was immediately in love with it.  It was a bright metallic orange and boy did it shine in the hot California sun!  Called Orange Burst Metallic, this is one of the 12 choices available for the Equinox.

There is plenty of space in the Equinox crossover SUV, with its 63.5 cubic feet of cargo space in the back, once you fold down the 60/40 back seats.

SURROUND VISION

What blew me away about the Equinox crossover SUV was it’s Surround Vision.  I was trying to park the car as straight as possible by our street’s curved curbs, no easy feat.  But while attempting to do this the main LED console showed me a bird’s eye view of my car…and where it was relative to the curb.  I was shocked!

I told my husband that the Equinox somehow had the ability to see its location from a satellite camera from above, it’s the only way I could explain seeing the car parked in such detail next to the curb with grass. 

With this Surround Vision split view, the Equinox is parallel parking. You can see how close you are to the car behind you (another Chevy!) as well as how close you are to the curb and the parking spot guidelines ahead of you (left picture of split screen).  Amazing technology.

I later realized that the car on the LED screen was white and I had this bright orange car. It’s then that I remembered that the Equinox Premier 2.0T crossover SUV is equipped with four cameras – one in the rear, one looking forward, and one under each mirror on the car. 

The Equinox computer had stitched the views together to give me a bird’s eye view of the car.  Really Fascinating and extremely helpful.

My daughter and I packed up the car and we were off on our road tripping adventure.  Without stopping, the trip would take us a bit over 5 hours.  But using my handy Road Trippers app (one of our fave family travel planning tools), I knew we’d get there around night time, as we had places to visit!

Being a techie, I took some time to enjoy the dashboard and entertainment display.  It’s the biggest display I’ve ever used in a car, which works great for navigation. 

I found the smaller dashboard display (beyond the steering wheel) to be very handy as well and loved the updates of the current speed limit as I traveled. 

In Arizona, the speed limit on the freeway fluctuated quite a bit but this feature kept me in line, which was very helpful because I had heard that cops hang out in this stretch of freeway, ready to give out tickets.

But before driving into Arizona, we had to stop for a famous date shake at Hadley’s, near Cabazon, which is near Palm Springs.  For most of my life, I had heard of Hadley’s date shakes but was always afraid to try one. 

As my daughter and I nervously ordered a date shake, the clerk offered us a free sample first.  It was pre-mixed and came out of a machine much like frozen yogurt.  It had small pieces of dates in the mix.  Really, it resembled more like ice cream than a shake.

We each tried a bit and much to my surprise, we liked it!  We ordered one to split.  I drank every ounce and now I’m hooked.  I will stop for a date shake every time I travel through Cabazon! 

After buying some dried fruit and nuts, we were on our way to Pioneer Town.

Pioneer Town took us off our main route by about 45 minutes each way.  As you can see, there’s not much to do in Pioneer Town.  We found one store open, an art gallery where they create their own art in the back of the store.

This dusty town was built in 1946, meant to be a movie set depicting the 1880’s Old West.  The idea was that production companies could use it for their western movies.  And it worked, hundreds of westerns and early TV shows were filmed here and some are still done here today.

Pioneer Town is available to visit 365 days a year, but most of its stores are closed, except for on Saturday when they stage “shoot-outs” down its main (and only) street.

While visiting, we ran into 4 other people exploring the town and even made a friend…

He didn’t have much to say but was holding up pretty well considering the heat.

Next stop was Quarzite, just inside the Arizona state line.  My friend from Mommy Blog Expert had introduced me to Quartzite a couple of years ago as we were driving to Scottsdale for a conference.  They have so many cut and polished rocks for sale here, I couldn’t wait to show my daughter.

Unfortunately, the rock business in this town rolls up during the summer months, with all of the stores closed.  My daughter and I did happen to find a junkyard-type looking business with so much junk there was barely any room to park.  We bought some of the man’s small rocks while he told us about his plans to strike it rich in the surrounding hills one day.

As it was 111 degrees outside, we couldn’t wait to get into our cold Equinox crossover SUV oasis and hit the road again.

One of the great features of the Equinox is that you can lay the backseats all the way down, making it easy to get to our ice chest full of cold fruit and drinks while driving.

You can fold either one seat or both seats down, giving you plenty of space to haul stuff around.

The stretch between Palm Springs and Phoenix is long and boring with some people ripping up the speed after getting around slow-moving trucks.  I found the Equinox’s  Lane Change Alert helpful to identify and warn me of these quickly approaching cars.

I was also introduced to the Equinox’ Following Distance Indicator while driving this stretch.  This indicator would alert me that I should allow more distance between my car and the car ahead of me.  Helpful when driving in denser traffic or traveling at faster speeds on the freeway.

There wasn’t much to see unless you want to stop in Blythe, CA to see the prison housing 2,900 inmates.  Not.

We finally arrived in Arizona with a stifling temperature of 112 degrees.  Not much wind in this town.  But downtown Phoenix was pretty clean.  I loved the Phoenix ambassadors roaming around the city wearing bright orange shirts. 

Serving the city for over 20 years, you can ask any of the ambassadors for directions, help, or food suggestions.  They also assist the homeless population as needed.  They certainly made us feel safer at night, roaming around downtown.

Before my daughter’s volleyball tournament started in the convention center, we took a campus tour of ASU Downtown (very impressive) and spent half a day at the Arizona Science Museum.  We had a lot of fun there and spent nearly 4 hours playing with their interactive activities. 

I especially liked the CREATE at Arizona Science Center, a separate 6,500 square foot building designed to inspire kids and adults to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and learn about science, technology, engineering, and art by making things.

CREATE uses state-of-the-art equipment like laser cutting machines, sewing machines, 3D printers, and more, costing thousands of dollars.  Once you take some classes, you can use the equipment.  There is a monthly cost to be a part of CREATE.  Cool stuff. 

CREATE is a maker lab, and maker labs are cropping up everywhere.  Look for one, there’s probably one in your community or nearby.

My daughter’s volleyball team played well and hard for 4 days straight.  By the time they were done, it was already nearly evening. 

The ride home from Phoenix was direct and uneventful but enjoyable with the useful and helpful features of the 2018 Equinox Premier 2.0T crossover SUV.

*I borrowed this 2018 Equinox Premier 2.0T crossover SUV vehicle for purposes of review.  All opinions are my own.