Let me explain.
A year and a half ago we finally replaced our 2010 Ford Flex with a 2025 Grand Highlander Hybrid. We opted for a loadout with bucket seats in the middle row as opposed to a bench, which makes it a bit harder for Canéla to travel with us, but second row bun warmers feel pretty decadent.
A week from tonight, five of us will be crammed in there on a 1300 km trip to Thompson MB so that Audrey, Glory, Bryce and Sara and I can catch the train to Churchill on Monday.
It is intended to be a whirlwind tour that sees us only sleeping two nights in Churchill, but this will facilitate us taking a bear-season tundra buggy tour on the relative cheap - I mean, compared to flying in on a one-day, in-out charter flight.
No one in this household is a light packer, so the question is whether or not even the immensity of The Lander has enough room to accommodate all our luggage.
No one in this household is a light packer, so the question is whether or not even the immensity of The Lander has enough room to accommodate all our luggage.
The third row is a 60-40 split, so we keep a significant amount of the 97 cubic feet of cargo space, and I thought perhaps that might be enough. It looks moderately copious, no? But is it five suitcases and five carry-ons copious?
Glory though, as the person most likely to be sitting in the rearmost seat, expressed an interest in not spending so many hours feeling either crowded or claustrophobic, which seems fair.
We bought a rooftop cargo carrier from Princess Auto shortly after getting the Lander for exactly this reason, but when faced with mounting it for such a vast journey, I was overwhelmed by apprehension.
But today, Glory helped me get the box we call Space Dracula's Coffin out of the corner of the garage where it has languished for 16 months and lifted onto the roof of our immense SUV. The sparse instruction manual that came with it was long on disaffirming and short on actual installation instructions, but a video on the Princess Auto website gave us all the guidance we really needed.
Before too long we had it attached on the portside and had also confirmed that the arcane looking hinge system inside actually does allow it to be opened from either side. And sure, maybe it looks a little bit like we are driving Spock to his funeral in Wrath of Khan, but that's a small price to pay for an additional 109 lbs of additional luggage space.
It will take a little finagling to line up the holes and brackets completely on both sides, but since we can't actually park the Lander in the garage with the SDC in place, we determined that this proof of concept is sufficient for the nonce. We will take the rig out to level ground in front of the house (the manual recommends no more than 1-2 degrees of tilt when installing it 😕) the Saturday before we leave.
So! This does help mitigate a bit of my cargo anxiety for certain.
But it does introduce worries about aerodynamic compromise doubling our fuel, windshear ripping the entire roof off or making us tip, or just losing the key for the darn thing... but I am confident that those can be dealt with in time, the same as this was.
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