We had pulled off U.S. Route 395 in the small town of Independence,
followed a road into the undistinguishable mountains of Inyo National
Forest, and parked in a gravel pull-out. There, we folded down the rear
seats of the 2019 Porsche Cayenne S
we were driving, unrolled our Nemo sleeping bags, and drifted into
dreams as the faint outline of the Milky Way beamed in through the
panoramic sunroof. Why did we decide to sleep in the third-generation
Cayenne? Mainly because we didn't want to spend money on a motel room.
But we also couldn't pass up the absurd opportunity to camp inside of a
Porsche.
The next morning as dawn leaked through the leather-lined cabin, we
awoke from our fitful slumber and opened the hatch of the Cayenne S. My
girlfriend Mallory wiggled from her sleeping bag and said, "I've got too
many bony prominences to sleep in this car." Probably wasn't the
greatest idea in hindsight.
We had stopped at the base of Onion Valley Road, a 13-mile stretch of
writhing pavement that rises more than 5,000 feet in elevation and is
best described as a punishing series of switchbacks. Time for some fun. I
popped the Cayenne into Sport+ mode, switched over to manual control of
its eight-speed automatic transmission, and drove up the road like a
starved fox chasing a plump hare.
According to Porsche, the
Cayenne S can crack 60 mph in 4.6 seconds, and its 434-horsepower,
twin-turbo 2.9-liter V-6 delivered smooth and intoxicating power as we
climbed through the Sierras. Mallory squirmed every time the exhaust
cracked between upshifts, or when I stood on the brakes and the Cayenne
lurched forward just enough to toss our stomachs and turn our knuckles
white. No matter how aggressively I drove, the Porsche remained unfazed.
I might've pushed harder had I not been so distracted by the majestic
waterfalls running between lodgepole pines then spilling down granite
mountain faces.
We slowly rolled back down the road to let the
brakes cool before rejoining the highway north toward Mono Lake, a
760,000-year-old saline soda lake that acts a rest stop for more than
two million migratory birds. A few miles north, I found a narrow dirt
road leading to a deserted reservoir, where I adjusted the Cayenne's air
suspension to its highest setting, selected the Gravel off-road drive
mode, and proceeded to slide the SUV sideways along the rocky gravel
shoreline—much to Mallory's chagrin.
We stopped for lunch at a picnic area along the West Walker River,
where we watched Steller's jays fly between gnarled tree branches. When
we got back into the Cayenne, we cranked its 15-speaker Bose
surround-sound audio system so loud we couldn't hear ourselves as we
sang along to Styx's "Come Sail Away" and "In The End" by Linkin Park.
We laughed until our bellies ached as we made our way toward Reno.
An
hour south of The Biggest Little City in the World in a town called
Gardnerville, the police had blocked off the highway because there was a
wicked car crash that had caused a sedan to flip and land on its roof. I
brought up the Cayenne's navigation, pinched my fingers on the
12.3-inch display in search of an alternate route, and noticed that Lake
Tahoe was only an hour away. So we bailed on Reno and diverted west
along Nevada State Route 207, which steadily climbs to the lip of the
bowl that Lake Tahoe sits at the bottom of then precipitously drops off
as you drive into town. We decided to pay in impromptu visit to
Mallory's college roommate, Kevin, a geologist for the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service who lives with his parents in South Lake Tahoe when he
isn't trapping bats, tagging deer, or camping at an alpine hot spring.
Kevin showed me his camping rig, a 220,000-mile Toyota Tacoma
SR5, and introduced me to his lovely parents, who invited us to use
their guest room for the night. We rode bicycles along dirt paths
through the woods, ate dinner at a tap house, and then went to Steamers
Bar & Grill, where we threw back shots of Maker's Mark and
mini-pitchers of beer while Kev and Mal reminisced. The next morning, we
drove to North Lake Tahoe to float the Truckee River in blow-up tubes
we bought at a grocery store and later scraped our asses on huge rocks
as we passed through the rapids just before the tuber's exit. Afterward,
we hugged Kevin goodbye and started the four-hour drive west to visit
Mal's parents in Fairfield, California.
With Mallory asleep in the passenger seat, I stared out the
windshield at a roller coaster of headlights going up and down the
steeply graded highway and pondered how much I've enjoyed the all-new
Cayenne. I thought back to when Porsche's first-ever SUV debuted, how it
impressed the hell out of me, how I didn't want to like it as much as I
did. The third-generation, 2019 Porsche Cayenne
is more handsome, capable, and refined. It hauls like an SUV should and
handles as well as most sports cars, if not better. I honestly couldn't
muster even one moan about the Cayenne.
After staying the night
with the parents in Fairfield, we ate a delightful home-cooked breakfast
of fried eggs and Bisquick biscuits. Before we left, I lied to Mrs.
Emerson when she asked if her daughter and I "got up to any shenanigans"
in the guest bedroom. We drove north through the Russian River Valley
and stopped at an antique store in Duncan Mills, where we bought a
trippy painting of an eagle from an equally trippy young man. Later, we
toured a flea market where we found a bamboo end table and a butter dish
shaped like a wild boar. We bought sandwiches from a small roadside
store and pulled into the weeds on the edge of the Pacific Coast Highway
so we could picnic from the Porsche's tailgate.
When we spotted
the spray of whale spouts out in the ocean's misty distance, Mallory's
rust and seaweed eyes lit up; she loves whales—all cetaceans, really. We
followed a pod of humpbacks along the coast into Mendocino County and
the bewitchingly adorable town of Mendocino. We walked out to its
coastal headlands, and under a serape blanket we watched a pink sunset
dip below the waves. In nearby Fort Bragg we stopped for dinner at a
harbor restaurant called Silver's and—fat with steak and lobster and
thickly breaded calamari—I blearily drove along Route 20 until we found a
disused logging road where we could "camp" again for the night.
Mallory reorganized our luggage and antiques while I emptied my lungs
into our sleeping pads, which we regretted not using the first night we
slept in the Porsche. Mallory and I are both very lanky, so we
appreciated that third-generation Cayenne is 2.4 inches longer than its
predecessor, and that it offers up to 60 cubic feet of cargo space,
which was just enough for our long bodies if we rested our feet on the
front center console. I again fell asleep looking through the glass roof
at the burning stars, and woke up to the sound of tires on gravel and a
spotlight beaming through our windshield. The police officer was young
and friendly, and he told us they were looking for a man and a woman who
had ditched their car during a pursuit. He said he didn't mind us
camping on the road, and proceeded to ask us if the Porsche was an
all-new model. He laughed at our overcrowded interior, and said we
looked like a couple of "pack rats."
The next morning, we drove
back into Mendocino for breakfast burritos. The day that unfolded from
there was a series of perfect moments, one after another. We went
tidepooling at MacKerricher State Park, watched baseball at the bar at
North Coast Brewery, played with fur pelts at the Noyo Center for Marine
Science, skipped stones at Van Damme State Park, and ate a romantic
dinner at Wild Fish. Later, we rented a hobbit-like cabin at the
eccentric Howard Creek Ranch Inn, where Mallory filled our hot tub and
opened a bottle of wine as I turned on some music and grooved out. In
the morning we ate breakfast in the main house with some intolerably
intolerant people and—for nearly two hours—listened to the ranch
patriarch Sunny tell us how Von Dutch pinstriped his motorcycle's fuel
tank in exchange for a bottle of wine, how his Lockheed engineer father
brought home buckets of aircraft-quality bolts picked out of the trash
at work, and how we needed to visit his website, www.liftsaucer.com.
We
left the ranch and drove south on the Pacific Coast Highway—known as
one of the most beautiful roads in the world. A two-lane reverie with
rises, dips, blind corners, and long, open straightaways, PCH can most
definitely be enjoyed at its 55-mph speed limit, as long as you
absolutely disregard the signs before turns that suggest slowing to 20
mph. Simply put, the 2019 Porsche Cayenne
S is a big-boned, plus-sized sports car, and as such its steering is
beautifully weighted and perfectly fluid, thanks in part to a new
multilink front suspension. I told Mallory I look forward to meeting the
witches at Stuttgart, because no SUV should turn in with so little
drama. Our Cayenne also came with an option that has never before been
offered on the model: rear-axle steering ($1,620), which allows the rear
wheels to move and angle up to three degrees. I wish I noticed a
difference but didn't, spellbound as I was by the coastal road. I
probably would've driven along the water all the way back to Los Angeles
had I not gotten annoyed with stops for road construction and
slow-moving RVs.
We cut inland to U.S. 101, which runs as far south as Ventura, but
stopped short to spend the night in San Luis Obispo. We drove almost six
hours before pulling over, and only then because our bladders got full
before the Cayenne's 23.7-gallon fuel tank went empty. When we arrived
in SLO, we ate alone on the heated patio of a restaurant at the
swankiest hotel in town, and then walked two blocks where we rented a
cheap, charmingly creepy room at a Victorian-era inn. After our morning
shenanigans, we visited one of the all-time best sandwich shops
anywhere—High Street Deli—then got back on the highway, knowing we'd
arrive in L.A. just in time to enjoy 5 p.m. gridlock.
After six days and almost 1,700 miles, we returned home in our
bug-splattered Cayenne. I emptied our many bags, antiques, and
miscellanies—reminders of the fun we had on our haphazardly planned road
trip to Northern California, which wouldn't have been nearly as fun or
as comfortable had we not done it in a 2019 Porsche Cayenne
S. I asked Mal if she felt sore at all, and she said she didn't, then
smiled and asked when we'd be buying a Cayenne of our own. "If only I
could I afford it," I said. "But we can sleep in it again if you want."
She turned and walked into the house without a word.
