September 16, 2026

Eight Seats, Six Pumpkins, and One Very Pleased Car

There is a particular kind of Saturday in October when the whole group decides, at once, that it is time for pumpkins. Not a quiet trip for two. The full expedition. Cousins, in-laws, at least one friend who has never picked a pumpkin in their life and intends to treat it like an extreme sport. Eight people, six pumpkins, and a vague plan to also "maybe" do the corn maze, which turns out to be four acres and forty minutes longer than anyone budgeted for.

This is the day when a car stops being a way to get somewhere and starts being the only thing standing between a nice memory and a group argument about who has to hold a pumpkin on their lap for the drive home. The vehicle you bring is the whole logistics plan.

Getting Everyone In Without a Summit Meeting

This is where the Kia Telluride does its one job better than almost anything on the road: it seats eight, and it does it without the third-row negotiation that turns every group outing into a diplomacy exercise. Nobody has to call shotgun strategically. Nobody has to fold themselves into a jump seat and pretend to be comfortable. Eight adults fit — genuinely — and the back two rows still have enough shoulder room that the drive does not feel like a punishment for having friends.

At the farm in New Jersey, the parking lot was a museum of family vehicles, most of them overflowing. The Telluride just opened its doors and absorbed everyone like it had been designed for exactly this, which, to be fair, it was.

The Maze, the Patch, and the Loading Dock Problem

The corn maze is where the opinions come out. Half the group insists they know the way. The other half is trying to get a signal on a phone in the middle of a cornfield. The friend who has never done this before keeps saying "I think we've been here" about places we have absolutely been. It is, as promised, forty minutes longer than anyone planned, and everyone comes out the far side slightly giddy and deeply ready for lunch.

Then the pumpkins. Six of them, because everybody wants their own, and no two people can agree on what constitutes the "right" pumpkin. There is a whole debate about stem integrity that we will not reproduce here. The short version is that the car's cargo area — 87 cubic feet with the third row down, though we only dropped it partway — swallowed all six pumpkins, a bag of gourds nobody asked for, and a hay bale someone bought on impulse, with room to spare.

The phrase "will it fit" simply never came up. That is the entire point. The Telluride is a family trip with a seatbelt on.

The Drive Home, With Everyone Quiet For Once

The ride back was the surprise. Eight people, coming down off the sugar and the sun, and the cabin just... settled. The Telluride is a genuinely quiet place for a three-row SUV, and for the first time all day nobody had much to say. Just the road, the last of the light, and six pumpkins gently rearranging themselves in the back on every turn.

We got home, unloaded the expedition, and nobody had held a pumpkin on their lap for a single mile. If that is not the whole brief for a fall family trip, I do not know what is.

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