From Trees to Seas: Inside the Unhinged Porsche Safari Party

A Porsche Safari Party for the Slightly Unhinged

When most people hear “rally,” their minds jump to the greats like the Dakar, Monte Carlo, Trans-Siberia, etc.—legendary events defined by grueling terrain, screaming engines, and drivers who eat dust for breakfast. Those rallies are all about pushing both human and machine to the brink in unforgiving conditions.

Safari Party? Well… it’s a little different. It’s part rally, part adult summer camp, and part fever dream. It’s an event for Porsche enthusiasts who prefer their paint chipped, their tires muddy, and their stories just a little bit unbelievable. It’s a place where quarter-million-dollar builds and ten-thousand-dollar garage projects run side-by-side—where the only podium finish that matters is who brought the best campfire story.

The Visionaries

Before we even talk about the 2025 “Trees to Seas” edition, allow me to introduce Brock and Tanner, the two friends who cooked this whole thing up. They’re the kind of duo you knew in high school—the guys who made every decision together, good or bad—the ones everyone knew would either end up in trouble or doing something epic (and often both).

They’re at the same time charismatic and creative, with a knack for making everyone feel welcome. Brock (and Brock, if you’re reading this, I say this with love) feels like the fun uncle. He’s quick to laugh, always in the middle of the action, and is somehow still making sure the event runs like clockwork. Tanner is the same way, but you can catch his mind running five steps ahead, plotting the next leg of the rally or thinking about camera angles before we even leave camp.

In 2024, they hosted the first official Safari Party in Utah. It was three days of lifted 911s, gnarly Cayennes, and a handful of other misfit machines tearing through mountains and desert. It was part driving, part filming, and all fun. It left everyone wanting more. For the year-two encore, they decided to go big: taking the party north to Oregon, starting in lush green forests and ending with tires kicking up sand on the edge of the Pacific.

Arrival: Getting Lost, Then Found

I linked up with another driver on the way to the start point, and we promptly blew right past our first waypoint—a tiny bridge that crossed the creek to our campsite. With no cell service, we were navigating purely on the hope of seeing another car like ours. The road wound through towering evergreens, sunlight filtering down in thin golden ribbons, and the smell of pine sap was sharp in the air. Realizing we were now lost, we made our way back to the nearby campground convenience store to jump on the WIFI network and verify the location of our specific campsite.

Eventually, a message popped up in the group Discord: “Turn right at the bridge after the market.” The “market” was a weathered little building with a Coca-Cola sign fading in the sun, the kind of place that sells fishing lures, duct tape, and maybe a dozen candy bars behind the counter.

Following the directions brought us into a meadow that looked like a fever dream, with a lineup of wildly varying German sports cars scattered like toys in the grass. Some were pristine; others bore the proud scars of hard miles. A Safari 911 sat next to a battle-worn Cayenne, and not far away was a VW Bug with a Herbie tribute livery that looked ready to race the Baja 1000. Brock greeted me at the gate with a hug through the Cayenne’s window before pointing me toward parking. That was the moment it clicked: I had stumbled into something truly special.

Day One: Gas Runs and Group Drives

Our first unplanned adventure came at 8 a.m., when most of us realized the Camp Sherman pump didn’t have premium fuel. The moment the news broke, there was a scramble worthy of the pit lane, with drivers hopping into their cars, radios buzzing, and the roar of thirty-odd engines firing up in near unison.

After distancing ourselves from the campgrounds, the sleepy mountain road was filled with Porsches, Land Rovers, and a resilient old Mercedes G-Class hurtling toward the nearest gas station 23 minutes away. I filled my Cayenne to the brim with 93 octane, grabbed a cold Monster, swung a U-turn, and headed back, passing the G-Class still lumbering toward the pumps. The G’s pace, or lack thereof, became a running joke all weekend.

Day one’s driving was designed to shake off the rust and to get familiar with the terrain. We split into “fast” and “slow” groups; my Cayenne joined the fast crowd with Tanner’s safari 911, several other Cayennes, the 944s, and Herbie the VW Bug. The first few miles were cautious, as everyone was feeling out their rigs, but by the second leg, dust plumes stretched for miles behind us.

By evening, camp smelled like pine smoke and hot brakes. We circled the fire, beers in hand, swapping chase stories and commiserating with the videographers over botched shoots and the universal horror of forgetting your SD card at home. It was one of those nights where strangers turned into teammates, everyone already speaking the same language.

Day Two: Rally Mode

The day started with breakfast, which for me was an $8 burrito from the market up the road, before splitting into groups again. The slow crew took forest access roads; the fast group went rally-style into the mountains. Well over 100 miles of dirt and gravel flew by under the Cayenne’s tires, paddle-shifting through every corner with Giovanni, my co-driver from Italy, riding shotgun.

Giovanni, with his thick accent and sharper wit, immediately slipped into full rally co-driver mode. Looking at the trail map on my infotainment screen, he called out corners like we were running Group B: “Left 4! Right 2! Downshift here! Hold the corner! Accelerate… bellissimo!” His grin never faded, nor did mine, as we ate up the route.

One of Safari Party’s best features is the media team. Six pros, plus a purpose-built Cayenne camera car (and a much slower storage container Land Rover), chased the action from every angle. When the day ended, they’d crowd around two camp tables that immediately became covered in dusty cameras and dirt-caked gimbals. MacBook Pros glowed in the dark as they dumped memory cards and pieced together the day’s story in real time.

If you are interested in seeing more content from each of these awesome dudes, you can find each of them on Instagram here—

David @belovedfriday – Connor @connor.mcklain – Evan @pollockpictures – John @wakkagram – Sam @samoffgrid – Dave @dave_demille – Mike @mikes_vision

That evening, we staged a “time attack” up a 4.5-mile mountain pass, with an army of cameras and drones recording every drift. At the start line, the mood was equal parts nerves and adrenaline. Before launching, my only thought was a quick prayer that no deer would dart across my line. The KC Titan light bar and chase lights were strobing, and the Cayenne’s AWD and 500+ horsepower were ready to go, but I was well aware that 7,000 pounds of Porsche in motion takes significant convincing to stop. Fortunately, I didn’t end up needing to.

Not everyone made it up or down without incident. A friend’s Cayenne slid off-course, ending up at a precarious 45-degree angle over a creek bed, where strategically placed recovery straps secured it to a tree overnight. Nobody was hurt, but we drove down the mountain one car short, headlights cutting through the dark toward the waiting campfires. By the end of the next evening, the misfortunate Cayenne was lifted out of its resting place atop the creek bed, ultimately still drivable, and navigated solo the rest of the way to meet us all at the beach. Thanks to the steel front bumper and underbelly skid plates from off-road Porsche upfitting company Eurowise, the car was virtually unscathed after its more than 40-foot descent off the side of a backwoods trail.

Day Three: To the Sea

This was it. The “seas” portion of Trees to Seas. We left Camp Sherman early, carving through the mountains toward Tillamook, stopping for fuel and a dam-side group photo before hitting the coast. Somewhere along the way, we passed the most “Oregon” thing I saw all trip: a beer garden open in the middle of the day at a gas station turnoff in the tiny town of Detroit—population 225.

Alas, the beach was beckoning, and when my Cayenne rolled off the pavement into the sand, there was no hesitation. I dropped it into off-road mode, switched off traction control, and ripped into the ruts toward the ocean. The sand was softer and looser than dirt—perfect for swinging big, sweeping drifts along the shoreline.

The funniest moment came courtesy of a one-week-old rally-prepped Audi TT that caught fire. One man yelled “fire,” and suddenly three of us—me, Jaden in an LS-swapped 944, and Ian in Radkar944—were sprinting toward it with extinguishers. We arrived at the same time, debated for two seconds over who would pull the pin, and discovered Jaden’s extinguisher was still in the box.

Sand recoveries became their sport. I used my Warn winch eight times in one day to pull five different, lower-clearance Porsches back onto firm ground. Between rescues were high-speed runs, splashes into the shallows, and the occasional victory donut. The air was thick with salt, exhaust, and laughter, and our heads didn’t find pillows until late night turned into early morning.

The Real Reason

The official end of the rally wasn’t a finish line on a beach. It was instead a long table at the Tillamook Cheese Factory the next morning, where eight of us, sunburnt and still dusty, demolished a mountain of cheese curds. I was surrounded by people I had known for just three days, yet they already felt like long-time friends.

This was my first rally, and now I get the appeal. Safari Party is the kind of event every car enthusiast dreams about. It combined several days of nothing but rally-style driving, good company, and high-risk, high-reward action shots worthy of a frame in any gearhead’s office.

Safari Party 2025, “Trees to Seas” edition, may now be in the history books, but judging by the conversations around that last campfire, this is one party that is just getting started. I can’t wait to see what Brock and Tanner cook up for 2026!