We are a family in Seattle who lives for adventure and soccer and because I’ve worked with Toyota in the past and my family really liked their vehicles (we’ve even been to the Toyota factory in Nagoya Japan)we ended up purchasing a Toyota Hybrid Highlander early last year (2020). So far we’ve enjoyed exploring many places near Seattle in that vehicle so when Toyota contacted me about trying their Toyota Sequoia Nightshade as part of a back to school campaign of course I said yes to trying it out.
The Toyota Sequoia Nightshade is a full-size SUV that can hold 7 people (or a driver and 6 soccer players) with three rows of seats including two captain seats in the 2nd row. My guys love how comfortable the captains seats are for road trips and we have them in our Toyota vehicle as well. They also liked the cool color of the Toyota Sequoia Nightshade for their back to school ride. I thought the coolest part was the center console in the front seat where there was so much room that it had a label “for hanging folders”. I even tried it out and they fit! Toyota vehicles always have very thoughtful details and it was nice to see some of them in this vehicle too.
We have been working on the kids’ room lately and last year they had a bunch of clothes that they barely (or didn’t) wear because we were at home all year. They also had a ton of books and toys that they’ve outgrown as well. There was so much room in the Toyota Sequoia that we were able to pack these all up and donate them to our local Seattle Goodwill in the hopes that maybe someone else would be able to get good use out of these things. We also love that Seattle Goodwill helps with job training and because of that the money earned from donations seems to keep giving back and giving back to our local community too which is a really powerful thing.
And the Toyota Sequoia is also a really powerful thing. The Toyota Sequoia Nightshade has a V8 engine and 4 wheel drive. It has a lot of towing capability (make sure you check but I’ve seen that it’s somewhere between 7000-7400 pounds). We were able to put our bike rack on it and bring our four mountain bikes with us on an adventure to Seabrook on the Washington Coast. It was nice to have so much space to bring everything and anything we might have wanted on this road trip. We even brought our rollerblades but we didn’t get a chance to use them because we did so much bike riding and tennis.
Seabrook has very easily accessible mountain biking and we stayed in the farm district again this trip and I should have a post up fairly soon. We have been here nearly a handful of times since the pandemic because it is such an easy road trip from Seattle and we had such a great experience at Ocean Tails where we stayed the first time. The Farm District is a great location because it is close to the mountain biking, tennis courts, basketball hoops and the horses at the farm.
Toyota also gifted us gift cards to help buy school supplies for local families in Seattle for back to school. We were able to shop online for the Seattle chapter of Rescue.org and there are still some items on their list if you would like to help out too. We also gave to Farestart because I love how Farestart helped our Seattle Schools feed students through 2020 and I love what they have been doing for our Seattle community for years.
Are you starting school this week too? I’m very thankful for Toyota for helping us to go back to school in such a fun and helpful way. It’s been a long time for us without school and this made it a bit more exciting to go back.
(PS. As stated above, we received a vehicle rental from Toyota as well as gift cards to help us give back to our community and as always the ideas on this blog are my own. We’ve since tried the new electric BZ4X with Toyota too.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)