If you’ve ever been to the Island of Maui, you’ll know that the only way to get around the island is by car. In preparation for our 8-day trip, I initially booked a minivan through Turo. If you’re not familiar with Turo, it is a car sharing app that allows you to rent vehicles from other users—think of it like Airbnb for cars. As we got closer to the trip, I shopped around a bit and found that I could get a minivan through Hertz Car Rental for almost half the price of what I booked on Turo.

When I shopped for car seat protectors for my children’s car seats, there were a ton of choices to choose from on Amazon. Essentially I had two choices to go with: either a quality name brand car seat protector such as the ones from Lusso Gear, or a similar looking one from a no-name brand for costing slightly less. I ended up buying both because I needed multiple car seat protectors, but I also wanted to test these two choices out to see if there was any difference between them.

Both Kuat Sherpa and NV bike racks look great and tout the same robust type of construction. But after comparing the two Kuat hitch bike racks, I decided on the NV 2.0 mainly because it allows you to add on a 1-bike or 2-bike attachment in the future for a total 4 bikes. With the Sherpa 2.0, you are maxed out at 2 bikes with no option to add on. The NV also has a higher weight capacity and includes a built-in bike repair stand, which can be useful to have.

I always thought that our family had plenty of room in our SUV for all of the extra stuff we had to carry with us. In fact, it actually was plenty of room especially since we owned a Toyota 4Runner that had plenty of cargo room. Even with longer items, we were able to fold down the rear seats and fit a variety of different things over the years. Eventually, our family grew and I realized that with more kids (and more car seats), the less space in the back we had for carrying stuff. We chose the Yakima Skybox 16 mainly because I knew that it would provide plenty of room for our things, but also would fit well on our 4th generation Toyota 4Runner.

Recently, I’ve come across a license plate frame that is extremely popular on Amazon when I search for a plain black license plate frame. It’s one made by Aujen and is made out of silicone. I was initially skeptical because I thought it might look cheap when installed over a license plate and on the car. However, I wanted to try it out considering there were so many good reviews on it.

Spending time inside of a vehicle doing anything other than driving, you may have thought about how convenient it might be to have a place to plug in your AC power device. Newer cars may have a built-in power inverter with a AC plugin socket, but for older cars, you are probably going to need a charger with a cigarette socket connector. I purchased this FOVAL 150W power inverter more than five years ago and have found this device to be incredibly useful for all of the times I’ve had to commute and work inside of my vehicle.

I’ve gone through a number of different phone mounts on my vehicles over the years, but for a while now I’ve been going with one particular brand due to its great quality and thoughtfulness to design: MPOW. I used to purchase these phone mounts exclusively through Amazon as they were one of the highest-rated mounts out there, but as of late I noticed that they are completely missing from the Amazon Marketplace.

I’ve always been a fan of clothing that has an automotive history associated with it. Personally, I’ve always had an affinity with brands such as Alpinestars, Honda, and Yamaha to name a few. So when motorsport apparel company Oloi reached out to me, it picqued my interest. Oloi provided me with a few articles of clothing from their line of motorsports apparel to try out and review. I wore them several times over the course of a few weeks and have provided my review here.

Getaround is a car sharing platform that provides cars for rent from other people looking to rent out their cars. The nice thing about Getaround is that if you need the car for only a few hours, then you can do that and you are charged at a particular rate. For those who don’t want to rent a car for a minimum of a day (or days at a time) such as Turo, this can be a better option. In my experience with needing a truck simply to haul stuff around, it worked. The truck was not in the best condition and I had to fend for myself when I felt I needed help (as a new user) at times, but I got the gravel I needed and the price was right.