Long Term: 2016 Mercedes-AMG GT S is the UFO in the Wild West

(Dear reader: This piece is my travel journal from my Wild West road trip across California, Nevada, and Utah. I hope you enjoy hearing about my eight days on the road and the memories I made.)

Day 1: Climbing Out of California

It’s a midday start to my road trip.  My 2016 Mercedes-AMG GT S’s trunk is packed full of suitcases, boots, a pillow, an air compressor and more.  I hoped to start the trip with a friend, but COVID-19 has spoiled that plan.  I am sniffly, but testing negative, and well enough for a grand adventure. 

The landscapes I see as I cross California tug at my heartstrings.  The inland hills are freshly blonde, having been toasted by the late spring sun.  Black oaks dot the hillside, and cows give scale to the rolling landscapes.

Across the Central Valley, the temperature starts to climb: 95°F, 105°F, 111°F.  I wonder how the locals can stand the intense heat.  I wonder if these will be the highest temperatures I’ll see on my trip. (They are.)

Soon, Highway 80 starts its snaking climb into the Sierra Nevada mountains.  The drive becomes fun as I ascend into the tall peaks with effortless power.  The twin-turbo V8’s 503 horses are untaxed as we spear upwards towards 8,000 feet. 

I can feel the front tires chewing away at the pavement.  They bite through the corners, get displaced by truck ruts, but generally follow the curves.  This is where the car is most fun, arrowing through the climb, whizzing past forests, with the steering wheel chattering away in my hands.

Highway 80 to Tahoe is a notoriously rough and noisy road.  Every snowfall, the highway patrol enacts chain controls, requiring passenger cars and 18-wheeler trucks to don cables or chains and beat the concrete surface to smithereens.  In the AMG GT S, the distressed pavement causes abrasive vibrations and ceaseless cacophony.  But this stretch of road is abusive in any car.

At Highway 80’s summit, I pull over to see two Sierra Nevada icons.  The first is the Sugar Bowl ski resort.  I’ve skied Sugar Bowl many times in my youth, but I’ve never seen it with melting snow and dirt runs.  It still looks majestic and formidable.  The second is the Donner Summit overlook.  A beautiful arching bridge connects the serpentine road down to Donner Lake.  I follow the road to the wind-whipped waters, enjoying the sight of summer vacationers at play, then continue on my way.

My dad, stepmom, and brother are vacationing in Truckee.  We share a dinner, and then give them hugs, and slog exhaustedly over the Nevada border to my Sparks hotel. 

My shoulder and neck muscles are sore from my half-day gripping the steering wheel.  The muscle tension and altitude have me brewing up a headache.  I try to sleep it off, but sadly, the hard mattress, noisy air conditioner, and distant roar of highway traffic allow me little rest.

Day 2: Crossing Nevada

I awake feeling dried up, like a desiccated sponge.  High-altitude Nevada has a way of sucking all the moisture out of my skin.  It takes a 15-minute soak in the shower to feel normal again. 

It is 5:00 a.m., an hour before the hotel breakfast starts.  No matter, I’m not hungry.  I grab a coffee to trick my exhausted body and hit the road.  Unfortunately, the brew doesn’t play well with the Excedrin I took for my headache, and I feel queasy in the car.

It’s a short slog on Highways 80 and 50A to Fallon, NV, where I fuel up in preparation for my trip across the Loneliest Road in America.  A pair of rough-looking dudes with arm and neck tattoos stare appreciatively at the AMG GT S.  Here, in exurban Nevada, the AMG and I don’t blend, and the attention is discomforting.

Eager to depart the curious gazes, I head out of town, putting the trailer parks and dollar stores behind me. 

Highway 50 flows from weathered basin to weathered basin.  These mountains have been pummeled by wind, rain and snow, and now they are scattered waves of sand, rubble and rock.  Long, scree-filled valleys span between distant ridges, with occasional stone fingers reaching out of the rubble.

While the landscape is desolate, it is not as lonely as I’d hoped.  More often than not, I crest a ridge and see an approaching car, way off in the distance, at the other end of the basin.  From miles away, the cars are too small to sort as friend or foe, which keeps my speed in check.  (Can police radar outreach my vision?)  So even with 250 miles of mostly empty, billiard-smooth road to cover, I drive on cruise control.  When the horizon is clear, I bump up my speed, and when traffic is oncoming or the topography blocks the sightlines, I trim my velocity.

Cruising at 80 mph along the five-mile straights, the V8’s rumble melts away.  However, the ceaseless din of tire and chassis noise leaves me awash in noise.

My journey turns unforgettable when I encounter a biblical swarm of grasshoppers.  The insects are each as long as my index finger, and they cover the road in crawling and hopping shapes.  Since they are too numerous to swerve around, I massacre hundreds of the poor buggers.  The AMG GT S’s steering isn’t sufficiently tactile to relay their crunches to my fingers, but with time, the toasted corpses caught in the wheels sets them out of balance.

After three or four miles, I clear the swarm and soon arrive at my first boom (and bust!) town of the trip.  Little Austin is decrepit but charming, with rundown motels and Old West bars.  

Highway 50 does a fun switch-back climb out of town, giving me a rare reason to use Sport mode for sharper cornering.

An hour or two later, I’m entering Eureka.  Eureka looks marginally better kept, and—to my surprise—its broad boulevard hosts a historic opera house.  While the town seems worth a sniff around, I still haven’t found my breakfast appetite, so I continue on.

(Out here, I have but two choices of radio—Bible thumping talk radio or Greenie NPR.  Neither has a firm grip on my antenna as I slip from basin to basin.)

While I can’t be bothered to stop for a meal, the massive mining dump trucks I spot thirty minutes later are an irresistible treat.  I do my biggest photo shoot ever, posing the AMG GT S next to the yellow earthmovers and clambering up their ladders for higher points of view.  

Ely is the final, and largest, town I’ll find on Highway 50.  Out of prudence, I refill the tank: the AMG GT S has returned 20 mpg across the desert, so I could make it deep into Utah if I pleased, but I don’t want to risk running dry in the high desert.

The best part of Highway 50 is its eastern end.  The towering Wheeler and Lincoln Peaks of Great Basin National Park are green and snowcapped.  As I approach them, storm clouds roll in, with dappled light and distant drapes of rain that add drama to the scene.  My route takes me clockwise around the peaks, then spits me out in Utah on Highway 21.

UT Highway 21 is everything I wanted from Nevada Highway 50.  It is remote and isolated, with little traffic in either direction, and endless straightaways linked by mountain squiggles.  Between the heavy rain bursts (which wash the bugs off my bumper and fenders), I alternate between blitzing the straightaways and screeching to a halt to photograph the jaw-dropping scenery.  The mountains here have a similar shape and scree to those in Western Nevada, but the slopes are steeper and the basins are more dramatic.  

I pass through grazing lands—occasionally delayed by cows on the road—and then emerge into the pale green vistas of southwest Utah.  Looking over the tops of the sage-dotted landscape, the tips of the bushes blend together into a sea of light green.  The horizon is broken by distant mountains and buttes, and the weeping skies clean the air and saturate the colors.

While Utah Highway 21 is the road I’ve been longing for, it doesn’t have the silky smoothness of Nevada Highway 50.  In the worst parts, the stiffly-sprung AMG GT S thumps over the choppy pavement.  But I’m having fun piling on speed and sawing at the wheel, so I don’t mind the pummeling.

When I reach Milford, my high-speed fun ends.  My radar detector chirps for the first time today, warning me of nearby UT Highway Patrol, and local traffic dictates my pace. 

In this region, the Utahns are busy cultivating the valleys.  I sweep past green farms as I follow the Beaver River east towards Bryce Canyon.

After a short jaunt on scenic Highway 20—its green valleys are nestled between pine-studded peaks—I pull into Panguitch for more gas and a meal.  The vegetarian tacos at Pepe’s Mexican Grill pass muster, although the waiter accidentally gives away my table when I get up to use the bathroom.

The post-dinner drive to Bryce Canyon City is on Highway 12.  The road is a beauty, with red rock hoodoos standing tall over the dark green pines.  The fun-loving road engineers who built this highway played into the landscape by cutting tunnels through the rusty rock.  I feel like I’ve landed in the movie Cars.

After 11 hours in transit, I arrive at Bryce Canyon City.  The AMG GT S’s firm seats were reasonably supportive for this long haul, though it was tough to keep my feet and knees comfortable for hour after hour.  (Extensive use of cruise control was a savior against lower extremity cramps.)  My butt is saddle sore—more cushioning, please!—but my back is in good shape.  And while my shoulders are tight after a day at the AMG’s twitchy wheel, I’ve avoided another headache.

Day 3: Bryce Canyon

Or not, as I wake with a muscle-tension headache from yesterday’s driving.  I push the brain pain away with more Excedrin and hustle out of the Best Western Ruby’s Inn to explore Bryce Canyon National Park.

Concerningly, I reach the park gates, the AMG GT S dings out a tire-pressure warning.  The right rear tire is down 10 lbs., but I can’t find any screws or nails in the tread.  I pump up the tire with my travel compressor, wondering if someone messed with my car overnight.

Once in Bryce Canyon, I’m astonished by the pure density of easily accessible, gob-stopping views from the rim road.  I take the (now filthy!) AMG GT S from overlook to overlook, and at each one I’m greeted by hundreds, if not thousands, of red, orange and white hoodoos.  These rock formations stand tall like the sand forests I made as a kid by dribbling wet beach sand out of my hands.

Today, the AMG GT S is my park shuttle, taking me from lot to lot and asking little more of me than some flexibility and dexterity as I fall into the low driver’s seat and wiggle my gigantic hiking boots into the pedal well.  Since the AMG GT S is an automatic, there is no other penalty for wearing boots behind the wheel.

The park’s speed limits range from 25 to 45 mph.  While the cars of my childhood wouldn’t engage cruise control below 35 mph, the AMG GT S will, and I use it extensively.  The cruise control is curiously adept at holding speed down hills; does it brush the brakes when fighting gravity?

I take a short—and highly worthwhile—hike down into the hoodoo forest to view the Queen’s Garden.  Soon after, the rain clouds return, and some of the subsequent viewpoints are rendered irrelevant by the misty drizzle.  I make the best of it by seeing what formation will pop out of the clouds.

The AMG GT S makes a statement amidst the SUV and camper traffic.  A few people stop to ask me about the car.  I happily open the doors for them so they can see the car’s unique cabin.  I hope they overlook my growing collection of road-trip debris!

I make up for yesterday’s skimpy meal planning by having lunch twice in the park.  The first is a delicious sandwich from a food truck, and the second is an unremarkable veggie burger at the Bryce Lodge. 

In the late afternoon, the rain pauses and scattered patches of blue sky appear.  The hoodoos cast their first shadows of the day, but the thunderclouds on the horizon mean that there will be no colorful sunset.

The break in the rain lets me take a quick, but memorable, stop at the Fairy Garden.  On my short hike I spot goblin faces and elf hats on the hoodoos.  

Full from the day’s sights, I leave the park for a blueberry-pie dinner, hot shower, and a good night’s sleep.  I’ll return to Inspiration Point tomorrow morning for a sunrise show.

Day 4: Escalante

I wake before dawn and check my weather app; it’s 45°F outside.  After bundling up in my sweatshirt, fleece and rain shell, I hurry out to the car, eager to get to Inspiration Point before the sun crests the horizon.  I’m in the mood for sunrise photography!

Disappointingly, the AMG GT S reports low pressure in the rear right tire again.  The again-escaped air suggests damage over malfeasance, but I don’t have time to sort it out—the sun is quickly ascending! 

I make my way to my pre-planned perch on the canyon rim at Inspiration Point and greet the day.  While the scattered clouds don’t glow warmly like I saw on the gift-shop postcards, the morning light on the hoodoos is still worth my early rise.  I find a few compositions and take hundreds of photos.  I hope my exposure bracketing, focus stacking, and panorama panning will merge smoothly together once I get home.

When the sunrise concludes, I refill my tire in the Inspiration Point parking lot while searching for the puncture, but I can’t find any intrusions in the tread.  Did I crack the wheel or break the tire bead on my Highway 21 blast?

Back in town, I snag a heaping plate of scrambled eggs at the buffet breakfast and then check out of my hotel room.  My room at the Best Western Ruby’s Inn was clean and comfortable, and I liked the hotel’s kitschy wild-west aesthetic; I’d stay here again.

Across the street is a gas station/tire shop that is happy to help with my tire leak, but I have lost my AMG hub cap removal tool, and we can’t remove the wheel from the car.  What a shame!  The $105/hr labor rate is the best I’ve seen in years.

The mechanic recommends I visit the Mercedes dealership in St George, 130 miles away.  As the leak is slow, I postpone the St George detour for another day.

Utah Highway 12 takes me away from Bryce Canyon City.  At first, it winds around the national park’s edge to Tropic, the small town in the eastern distance of my sunrise photos.  Then it climbs through sage-brush speckled deserts to Escalante, where the number of hippie shops is only bested by the count of geodesic domes.

After Escalante, the route turns spectacular, looping over and around petrified sand dunes.  It gleefully dives down into the Escalante River Canyon and follows the shady banks of the brown river.  When the highway has seen enough green cottonwood leaves against red rocks, it climbs the ridge to reveal vast vistas of undulating desert highlands.

After the sleepy town of Boulder, the road amazes anew with a climb to 9600 feet.  On Boulder Mountain, the aspen trees’ pale green leaves shimmer over lush meadows of grass and buttercups.  I feel like I’ve stepped into the Colorado Rockies, or perhaps Switzerland.

Utah Highway 12 is clearly known to other tourists.  I pass rental camper vans and Jeeps, plus groups of motorcyclists who have stopped to appreciate the epic views.

I’m glad that Utah is liberal with their painting of dashed center lines.  The passing zones let me sprint past slower traffic and take a good run down the mountain. 

But the good run almost turns bad, as a sneaky law enforcement officer in an unmarked white pickup truck is climbing the mountain in the opposite direction.  Thankfully, he left his radar on, and my Uniden R7 alerts me before the truck comes into view.

Highway 12 terminates in Torrey, where I fill the gas tank and figure I’ll finally be able to make time—by not stopping so frequently!—to Moab. 

But Highway 24 is also a feast for the eyes.  As I follow the Fremont River through Capital Reef National Park, some of the largest red rock cliffs I’ve seen tower along the road.  The green trees that grow along the river provide a perfect contrast to the ruddy ledges. 

Then Highway 24 dumps me into a lunar landscape.  Lumpy mounds of gray and tan sandstone fill the side windows.  As I pass Swing Arm City off-roading park, the hills are swirled with dirt bike and ATV trails.

Highway 24 becomes mind-numbingly straight after Hanksville.  I indulge my speed tooth, munching the miles at high velocity.  My game is to reel in the distant traffic and scoring passes. 

I’ve been in the driver’s seat for four hours, and my ass is starting to tingle with numbness, my feet are hot with pressure points, and my hips are aching.  I would do better to plan even more breaks into my grand tour.

After a quick hop on Highway 70, I take Highway 121 into Moab.  My rabbit to chase is an aggressively driven Honda Pilot.  The driver has no qualms with flying along at 90 mph.  I try to pace her at a distance, leaving the Honda as bait for any approaching patrol cars, but she ultimately pulls away.

Moab is chock-full of hotels and brimming with hopped-up off-road vehicles.  For a town that likes to get dirty, it has a surprising number of upscale hotels and restaurants.  

I score an early check-in at our Airbnb, and my friends Thomas and Barbara arrive from Colorado soon after.  We walk downtown for takeout Thai, then enjoy the meal over conversation and the tired complaining of their 6-month-old daughter Zoe.  (She’s had too much car seat time today.)

After dinner, Thomas sprays soapy water on my leaky tire.  Little soap bubbles form in the center of the tread block, suggesting the puncture may be repairable.

Day 5: Moab

We get up early to drive the dirt roads to the Gemini Bridges.  As my AMG GT S would be flummoxed by anything rougher than a golf course fairway, we take Thomas’s 2014 Toyota Highlander instead.  It has 4WD high and low, and will be able to tackle the rock-strewn trail.

After an hour of bumping along through the desert, I’m feeling slightly seasick. I’m happy to put my feet on solid ground at the Gemini Bridges parking lot.  It’s a short walk to the bridges, which fly a few hundred feet above the canyon floor and run parallel to each other, like a pair of highway overpasses.  Small swifts pop out of the cave behind the second bridge to snatch bugs out of the warm air.

We walk over the twin spans and then look up the canyon.  With a heightened awareness of my mortality, I approach the cliff’s edge and gawk at the vast view.  The wind curls up and out of the ravine, blowing up my face and inducing goosebumps and shivers.

When we return to the Toyota, baby Zoe is unhappy to be back in her car seat.  She cries all the way back to the paved highway.

After a short scenic stop at Dead Horse State Park, it is back to Moab.  I take the AMG GT S to a tire shop that caters to tourists and Jeepers.  Even though it’s 1 pm, they can help me immediately; 2025 is a slow year in Moab.

Tire technician Shawn is intimidated by my expensive AMG GT S.  Rather than drive the car into the garage, he drags a floor jack out to the parking lot and starts carefully removing the wheel.  We help him find the puncture, which he patches for $35.  The culprit is a fine, syringe-like metal tube that poked through the rubber.

After a late Middle Eastern lunch, I’m eager to try more off-roading.  We all load into the Highlander and take the short drive to Sand Flats Recreation Area.  Barbara and Zoe aren’t interested in risking the trails, so we leave them at a picnic bench.  Thomas impresses me by scrambling up a slickrock fin on the Baby Lion’s Back trail; the big SUV grinds up the 30-degree slope in 4LO without any complaints or tire slippage.

When the clouds overhead boom with thunder and lightning, we evacuate Zoe and Barbara to the apartment. It’s not the end of our off-road fun, as Thomas and I return to Sand Flats and drive a two-way spur of the Fins and Things trail.  The route alternates between sandy squiggles and slickrock obstacles.  Our biggest challenge is a pair of foot-tall steps; the Highlander is just high enough to snug up to the steps without scraping its bumper.  Even though the front tires aren’t tall enough to grip the top edge of the step, the rears push the truck against the vertical face and, somehow, the Highlander scrambles up the ledge.  

On the return, we stack rocks at the base of the step to shorten the drop and preserve the Toyota’s tailpipe.

With the hard obstacle behind us, I drive the easy, sandy stretch of trail back to the paved roads.  The Highlander’s large steering wheel is slow and imprecise in my hands.  It’s funny how lumbering this truck is on-road, yet so capable off-road!

It’s 8 pm, and I’m hungry.  I order takeout from the Moab Diner for dinner. The diner is absolutely full and when I return to my car, I find a high schooler taking photos of his girlfriend in front of the AMG GT S.  As in Fallon, the GT S makes an impression in Moab!

Day 6: Moab to Las Vegas

Today, I bid adieu to my friends Thomas, Barbara and Zoe and continue on to Las Vegas.  

I’m going to Las Vegas the fast way, rocking away the miles on the interstates.  First up is Highway 70, whose spectacular desert landscape has me stopping every 20 or 30 minutes at roadside vista points for photo ops.  Thankfully, traffic is sparse and I travel as fast as I like…or as fast as I dare!

As is the way with the AMG GT S, in a few hours, my butt is getting numb, my heels have pressure hotspots, and I’m generally uncomfortable.  For me, the GT S has better fuel range than seat range!

The world changes from red to green as Highway 70 approaches Salina.  The alpine vistas and snow-capped mountains are soothing and refreshing after the dry and jagged—but nevertheless beautiful—desert.  

Highway 70 merges and turns south at Highway 15, joining traffic coming from Salt Lake City.  The traffic is heavy, with passenger cars queued in the left lane, trying to pass strings of trucks and campers in the right.  It seems I’ve found Utah’s version of California Highway 5 madness, complete with the impatient drivers who dart into the right lane for illegal passes.

The green forests and white-capped mountains wither into rock and dirt as St George approaches.  Now, I’m surrounded by sandwich cliffs of petrified silt.

I’m welcomed to St George by a long finger of speed laser; the Utah Highway Patrol is out in force!  Thankfully, Waze has taken the surprise out of the ambush, and my speed is momentarily legal as I’m probed with laser and pass through the trap.

Highway 15 nips into the northwest corner of Arizona, wending its way through the claustrophobic Virgin River Gorge. I stop for a photo to prove my presence in Arizona. It’s a short hour in the Grand Canyon State before I’m dumped into Nevada.

As Las Vegas approaches, so does trouble.  A massive thunderstorm is on the horizon, dumping a slate-colored sheet of rain.  My radio music is interrupted by a travel warning: “Expect severe thunderstorms and quarter-size hail, which may damage vehicles.  Flash floods are possible.”  I’m advised to get indoors and stay on the first floor.  (Waze flashes a similar alert and tells me to stop traveling for the next three hours.)

But, there’s no highway rest area where I can stop and shelter, so I continue towards the storm.  The rain starts, then intensifies.  Winds push sideways across the road, worrying me that passing trucks may get blown into my car.  The rain slows me (and every else) as it obscures my vision; it is so heavy and mixed with hail that I can no longer see the road. My windscreen is flooded like I’m driving through a car wash.  

Blinded, I put on my hazards in the hope of avoiding being rear-ended.  Uncertain if it is safer to continue slowly or to completely stop, I choose to pull onto the shoulder and stop.  Thankfully, the deluge lets up slightly so we can see again, and other traffic continues around me.

The hail is so heavy that the road turns white.  The ice pieces is mostly chocolate-chip size, but some are big as Kix cereal.  It’s LOUD in the Mercedes as the ice pummels the glass roof and metal bodywork. 

I am frozen for five minutes on the dead shoulder, terrified I’ll end up with a dimpled AMG GT S.  To my right, a torrent of rainwater is building in the ditch: Will it become a flash flood that rises onto the highway?  Thankfully not, as the heart of the storm passes and the hail abates.

I slowly resume travel, cautious about the ice balls under my summer tires.  The traffic clears grooves in the hail-coated highway, but lane changes remain tricky.

Then, within 10 minutes of travel, the rain is gone too, and the temps are climbing back into the high 80°Fs.  My adrenaline is still pumping.  I should have pulled off the highway at the warning and avoided risking a collision.  Live and learn.

The day’s journey ends when I make it to my aunt and uncle’s house in Las Vegas.  As I shimmy out of the driver’s seat and start unloading the car, I notice that the hail storm has scrubbed the dirt off the AMG GT S’s sky-facing surfaces.  Though effective, it is one car wash I don’t wish to revisit!

Day 7: Las Vegas

While the prior days of my trip were about exploring unfamiliar wonders, today is about reuniting with the familiar.  Literally, I’m going to be seeing my extended family.

I have breakfast with my aunt and uncle, and then run to the bookstore to buy gifts for my cousin’s kids. 

The heart of the day is spent visiting my grandfather at his retirement complex. We go to the pool and eat lunch together.  In the afternoon, we look up the rules for casino—a card game he taught me when I was 10—and play it again for the first time in decades. It is as fun as I remembered.

When the afternoon wanes, we drive the AMG GT S to my cousin’s house. My grandfather likes the AMG GT S’s classic looks and its smooth but firm ride, but I think he is giving too much credit to the car’s suspension and not enough to the well-kept roads we are traveling.

My cousin’s kids are happy with their new books, and we have a pleasant visit.  It’s then back in the AMG GT S to gather with my aunt and uncle for dinner.

After struggling to get out of the AMG GT S for the second time, my grandfather says he could never own the car: it’s too low for a 93-year-old.  Sometimes I wonder if the car is too low for me, too.

Considering that the Mercedes’ high-end coupes and convertibles are typically purchased by retirees, the tight and low AMG GT was a risky design for Mercedes.  No wonder the refreshed AMG GT has a softer ride and is more like an SL coupe than a hard-edged sports car.

On the way back to my aunt and uncle’s house, I can see the glowing Las Vegas strip far away in the heart of the valley.  I’d love to explore its neon lights, but it’s time for bed.  Exploration can come another day; today was about reconnecting with loved ones.

It was so good to get one-on-one time with my relatives.

Day 8: 575 miles Berkeley

I’ve got my longest drive ahead of me, so I’m packed and in the car by 7 am.  It’s a short jaunt to the California state line.  As is the Nevada way, a glistening gold casino (with a rollercoaster!) stands sentry.  I don’t stop since I’m not a gambler…well, unless you count the way I roll the dice with my lead foot.

In fact, Google News is on to me: it warned me that the California Highway Patrol has a speed enforcement campaign planned for today.  The elevated policing is quickly noted with radar warnings and cruiser spottings: one of the CHP’s new stealthy Dodge Durangos is seen getting loaded onto a tow truck.

California’s beige desert basins don’t entice me to stop.  Neither do the familiar grassland hills that appear as I approach the Central Valley.

The AMG GT S’s sharp steering is handy for dodging road debris, like the tumbleweed that drifts into my lane.  But when the road is clear, a less edgy steering ratio would calm the car.

Those blond California hills that tugged on my heartstrings last week don’t call to me today.  The smoggy air around Bakersfield has me longing for Utah’s blue skies and red-and-green landscapes.

My first and only stop is in Bakersfield.  I’ve traveled over 300 miles at 85 mph and better.  My fuel economy is 22 mpg, which is slightly better than my old 414 hp E90 BMW M3 would muster on highway trips.  Of course, my body would be happier if I made stretching breaks at half the distance!  (Can I get the Euro comfort seats installed?)

Highway 5 to the Bay Area is a familiar slog.  The AMG GT S is moderately noisy on the textured concrete slabs, but its A/C does a great job of holding back the 95°F heat.

The way to make time on Highway 5 is to piss off other drivers and pass on the right.  This strategy is forced by left-lane hogs who clog the passing lane at 80 mph and form long queues behind them as they creep past big rigs.  I don’t completely blame the hogs, as the truck lane is much rougher than the passing lane.  The AMG GT S’s blind spot warning system is helpful when slicing between the fast lane and the truck lane.

As my second tank of gas starts to dwindle, San Francisco Bay greets me with foggy vistas.  It’s been over eight hours on the road, and I’m done with driving. I’m returning home to the fullness of a happy family, and the emptiness of an exciting trip drawn to a close.

The AMG GT S wasn’t the perfect partner for my whirlwind Wild West tour, but it did turn the road trip into an event. Wherever I went the AMG GT S turned heads, and my memories of it on Nevada Highway 50, in Bryce Canyon National Park, and the Las Vegas’ hailstorm will never fade.