Ever since I first heard about it, I’ve longed to do the 127 Corridor Sale. It’s 690 miles of yard sales, following US 127 from Michigan all the way to Alabama. It’s billed as the world’s longest yard sale and in my fantasy, we’re driving a super-comfortable SUV that has plenty of room for all the antiques and collectibles and just plain junk that we’ll buy as we stop at every yard sale that looks interesting along the way.
We did some version of that the summer we were first married on a cross-country trip that managed to skirt every major city in every state we drove through. We were in my little Honda Civic then, so our purchases were controlled by that car’s lack of storage space, which is why my 127 Corridor fantasy requires an SUV.
So I was thrilled when STI, Inc. offered me another vehicle to test drive for a week. This one was a 2013 KIA Sportage which sounded tailor made for getting our yard sale chops honed here in LA County. We looked at the map and consulted friends before deciding that the little town of Sierra Madre sounded perfect for our purposes.
Located at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, Sierra Madre (Mother Mountain) goes back all the way to 1864. It’s library was founded in 1886 by the original settlers and it is home to the world’s largest wisteria vine purchased in 1894. You’ve probably seen Sierra Madre many times since it’s a favorite location for Hollywood filmmakers, and while all of these things may seem like idle what-not to you, to us they spelled: antique heaven!
We set off on a sunny Sunday in April, perfect weather for the drive. Our hopes were high–what fabulous junk awaited us?
At first I had been somewhat intimidated at the idea of the Sportage. I’ve driven an SUV before–hey, I’ve driven a truck before too–but that doesn’t mean I like it. When I’m driving, I want to know that I’m in charge and not the car.
The Sportage isn’t actually an SUV, however, and that makes all the difference. It is a CUV–Crossover Utility Vehicle–which means that it’s built on a car platform. What you get, then, is the drivability of a car with a lot of the features of an SUV.
It’s incredibly easy to handle and very responsive to the touch. Taking curves was just so smooth and sitting up high on the 19″ wheels not only afforded a better view of the scenery–and the road!–but somehow felt safer as well.
The navigation/communication bells and whistles that I now insist must be on my cars were there as well:
Plus, there was a back-up warning system should be standard on all boomer cars. When you put the vehicle into reverse, there’s a rear-mounted camera that shows you what’s behind you.
I know that car manufacturers are touting this as a great way to not run over the kid playing in the driveway behind you, but for midlife and beyond drivers, it’s even more important. Our heads don’t swivel on our necks so easily and that restricted motion makes it difficult to adequately check what’s behind you as you back up. With the back-up warning system, which is also audio, that issue is taken care of.
So we set the Navigation system, which has SIRIUS Traffic, for Sierra Madre and took the long way around (i.e. not the freeways) via the surface streets of Glendale. If there had been a yard sale, we would have stopped–but, strangely, there wasn’t. Was this a warning? 
Perhaps so.
I had hoped to finish this story with a final photo of the huge Sportage trunk plumb full of all the goodies we’d gathered on our drive.
T’was not to be. Sierra Madre may have the oldest wisteria vine California, but it does not have one antique shop that we could find. I’m not sure why this is. We asked the nice lady at the desk of the Art Center and she thought about it for a moment and then said, “Yes…there should be an antique shop in Sierra Madre. I don’t know why there isn’t.”
As noted above, we got to try the KIA Sportage for a week for the purposes of reviewing it.
