7° day: Thursday August 9 th 2001: BOSTON

Seen the fatiguing trip of the day first the alarm clock today it is less implacable than the usual one. After a beautiful breakfast the first thing that we will do will strongly be American. It was one of the things that we absolutely wanted to try, the automatic laundromat it is one of the symbols of the daily life in america. For the traveller it means to enter the heart of America to feel one of them. After a hour around we have ended and we are ready to depart to the discovery of Salem. For first thing we visit a museum of the witches. You will reveal a half disappointment. Instead of a museum it deals with a show (a kind of monologue) in which tell old histories of witches in the 1800 Boston; understood words 3 or 4, a tragedy. The center of Salem is completely pedestrian and very nice. We direct there toward the I bring and we stop there to eat in a place where we eat some discreet dishes of fish. In the meantime the temperature has reached unbearable levels except, as usual, for Federica and Simona 2 that, rather they would not disdain a golfino, (awful!!). The I bring it is not enthusiastically, we decide to take the auto and to direct us to Boston.
Boston represents the america modern of our days, but with deep roots in the past centuries. The Massachusetts has the nickname of puritan (is puritanical), the wandering fathers have left the traditions, the way of living and to think of the whites, Anglo-Saxons and Protestants of 1700. The city is liked a lot however there. The young people are a lot of and, around the traditional point of meeting of the Bostonianis, the Quincy Market, finds a fizzy climate and goliardico; complessini that plays, cafe full of people, people that are met and tourists that slip him. A long walk (various kilometers) to the discovery of the center in Boston is signalled with a strip of red mattoncini, that you/they drive you to the discovery of this beautiful city. Waiting for the supper we cross a beautiful piece of it. We reach the Boston common, the most ancient public park in the whole United States. And' considered a symbol of liberty, in how much from when was created (in the distant 1630 around) every city could even also use him/it to pasture the cows; they were heathenly here however hung quaccheri, witches and pirates; another test that in this country, symbol and guide of the civilized world, they survive fused together great liberties and deep injustices. Tired for the long scarpinata we found there in a Tex-Mex (Mexican Texan restaurant), it will reveal him one of the culinary practices more results of this trip. In to direct us toward the car to return to our motel stopping us in a small supermarket to buy some water, we do one of the most beautiful and touching meetings of our trip. An elderly woman feels it speak in Italian and us firm; is an Italian woman of the province of Avellino. It tells us life of immigrant in the period in which in Italy life was really difficult and America embodied now a lot the dream of liberty and comfort for million of foreigners. His has not been an easy life and the American dream a hard survival is revealed only. Only for few America has been the street of the gold, for thousand (or million) of anonymous has been a life of sacrifices and deprivations with the pain for the distance from own origins. We leave her among the tears and with the promise, to our return in Italy, to make a regard to earth. We arrive in tired but happy to motel this American day, inside of us it is some grown the love for our country.

8°-9°-10° day: Friday August 10 th 2001 - Saturday 11 and Sunday 12: Boston - Denver

We wake up soon there in the morning. We have to prepare the baggages because in the afternoon it waits us for the airplane for Denver, and in the forenoon we have to continue the visit in Boston.
We take one of that tourist pulminis with which we turn big part of the center city, we also pass in front of the very famous university in Harvard, where the most fortunate children in richest America build theirs gilded future for the moderate figure of about eighty million a year. Here they assure that, unlike Italy, the money spent for the university is a real investment. We see then the financial district with skyscrapers and we cross the whole zone of the I bring. We go down to North end, old district of the I bring where the immigrants lived to the beginning of the 20° century, the little Italy in Boston could be defined; here religious parties, processions and various parties are held in memory of the old Italian traditions. We cross the district in direction center, the cafes resemble a lot to those Italian, but I think that the remained Italians are few; he treats for more of descendants that the language of their fathers has forgotten and I is by now American to 100%. is done particularly late by now, in two hours we have to redeliver the auto and to go to the airport for the check in; we stop there in a cafe with Italian writings, also the inside furnishing remembers an Italian cafe. Diegone and I (we call this way it, but it doesn't absolutely depend on the panza) we try a sandwich with the mortadella; we know to risk big, but it suits us, the sandwich is very good even if very dear (6 dollars). Ended the lunch we also try the express train (in substitution for once of the American mash), good almost as in the Italian cafes.
At 13.00 o'clock around we give the goodbye to the auto with which we have crossed 2.500 kilometers of the American east. We arrive in the airport it is we have suffered an ugly surprise: our flight for Detroit has been annulled for ugly time. And' the beginning of an ugly adventure that will show us that not only in Italy victims of delays and dysfunctions can be been. After endless discussions with the personnel to the counters we understand that we will have to find us a hotel for the night because up to the 13 of the following day there won't be another airplane. But is not ended yet because the airplane later the day departs with a monstrous delay and, arrived to Detroit with over two hours of delay we lose the coincidence for Denver. We are another time forced to find a hotel and to wait for the following day. All this has made us arrive to Denver instead Sunday 12 August to her times 18.00 that Friday 10; we have lost well two days in a program of narrow trip already. The problem is as to recover them; we will jump half day abdicating Canyonlands, other half day we will recover between Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon and one whole day we will remove him/it from the California.

2 ^ part of the trip: THE MYTHICAL WEST

10° day: Sunday August 12 th 2001: DENVER-GREEN RIVER

We are finally in Denver, the American west waits us. The myth of the frontier, of the excavated roads, of the immense spaces, it is under our feet. It doesn't serve us that an auto and a song of the Eagleses and the west it is ours. Reached the parking lot of the Alamo and delivered the necessary documents we withdraw the auto and we are ready to depart. To recover the lost time we have to do more than 500 kilometers, to cross the rocky mountains and to reach Green River, in the Utah near the Arches national park. We take the Interstate 70 we cross Denver where it is said beginnings the true West. And' extraordinary because when you are in Denver if you look toward East you see an endless lowland, toward West the imposing rocky mountains. Later more than 6 hours of auto (following the 3 in airplane) and all and three the exploited drivers we arrive dying to Green River and, taken a room to the motel 6 of the country, we don't see but the bed. We spend our first night under the sky of the west, we find us to a footstep from extraordinary parks. We are in the earth of the Indians and the pioneers, in a great state more than halves Italy with not even 2 million inhabitants, despite the tiredness there is the emotion for the places that we will see and the roads that we will cross and the sonorous column of our sleep will be an old Indian melody.


11° day: Monday August 13 th 2001: Arches National park-Monument valley.

Before alarm clock in the American west. We have slept little times, but we have to wake up very soon us. Many are the kilometers to cross and a lot of the things to be seen. We ask to Jimmy (sleepy doorman of the motel) to point out us a place whether to consume a gigantic breakfast. After two terrible days we are finally relaxed, also thanks to a stupendous dish full of eggs bacon and potatoes, juices of fruit and coffee. The good Jimmy has suggested us a good place (from cry also the maid; beautiful, timid and very American). After a hour we are already inside the Arches National park. We astonish for the wild and solitary beauty of this park; the horizon is endless, the silence is total, only noise is the rustle of the wind, we are all silent solos with our thoughts bewitched by these places. We move there two or three times with the auto to reach the most interesting places to continue afoot then. In sequence we reach quite a lot wonder of the nature: in the path crossed afoot we meet various arcs formed from the water and from the wind with a slow but inexorable erosion, thin to reach the symbol of the park the landscape arch, the longest natural arc of the world. Unfortunately after a couple of hours the time worsens and the rain arrives even. And' however already quite a lot late and in evening we have to reach the Monument Valley (around 200 more kilometers to South). We take the highway nr. 191, one of the most spectacular roads in America that it crosses the Utah and the Arizona from South North up to die to the border with Mexico. We graze Canyonlands, one of the tappes annulled because of the lost days and we have the feeling to lose us something of extraordinary. After the lunch to a Denny's some South kilometer of Moab we take back our trip. The time worsens more always and turns him into to turn of few minutes in an authentic downpour. We reach Mound, anonymous paesino in the middle of the nothing, where the 191 crosses the 666 that it brings to the Green Mesa and the rain from a truce there; we stop there to stretch us the legs and to change the water to the parrots. Mound is an example typical of the American west; these small towns of province can be to times of car from other centers lived of a certain relief. For us European it is amazing and spiazzante the impact with a country that has in the great distances and in the trespassed spaces more marked characteristics; in these immense plateaus he succeeds in seeing to the horizon the roundness of the earth. I realize to be almost unprepared to these loneliness and these immense silences; the life of city has forced us to make the chaos habit and noise, and as all the habits with the time they become us essential. And' for this that when we find us in places as these, where the silences, the spaces and the loneliness reign sovereign, we feel there to uneasiness up to even almost try a physical discomfort; we are not more protected from our habits.
Left again later by Mound around about thirty miles we abandon the 191 and we take the 163, the highway that I won't forget and surely ripercorrerò. The landscape is that of the films western, we are in the Indian reserve of the Navajos to which the government of the United States has given (after having taken everything) the neighbor Monument Valley. I relive the thousand of images sights in film and photos, but this time I am here and these feelings will stay forever me engraved in the mind and in the heart. In these unchanged places in the time they melt together him the myth of yesterday's frontier (that of the pioneers) and that of today (that of Easy rider and first still that of Jack Kerouac and now mine); along this road in my mind the songs of the Eagleses and the pages are crossed of "On the road", the myth of the old West and a nostalgia leading, my personnel, yearning and melancholy: that for the things that you/they don't are not live, for the time that spends and the times that change. And with the conviction by now lost that with a trip in the places always dreamt pursuing generations by now trails, that can be found that is looked for parallelly crossing to a road a journey of own heart. After all some all we are to the search of something that perhaps (or surely) we will never find. I believe that after all to every rectilinear and beyond every curve (as from a beautiful book of Alex Roggero) further to pursue the ghost of the blacktop (the black mantle of the asphalt, symbol and spirit of the American roads), each of us looks for own disenchantment.
In nanny of these thoughts and later around street mezz'ora we cross the last paesino before the Monument: Mexican Hat (so called for a rock to form of Mexican sombrero). The landscape becomes more and more wild and spectacular and after some miles we begin an along rectilinear with the Monument Valley on I break down him/it and we stop there to immortalize with photo and resumptions. I believe that we are in the street line in which it stops him Forrest Gump after having raced around for three years for America. We reach the entrance and we try to look for a place to sleep to the inside but being even only us a hotel of available rooms the shade. We return back then to Mexican Hat where we find two rooms in a delicious motel on the banks in the San Juan river. We go to eat in a stupendous place; an old restaurant with a sulky cow boy that cooks beefsteaks on a swinging grate and two pentolonis of beans on the heater. We eat to sipping a fresh beer and enjoying us a stupendous sunset that turns the rocks into an alive red; an unforgettable evening. Unfortunately we have left photographic cars and videocamere in motel, therefore all this will stay, indelible and yearning, only in our memoirs. We go to sleep to late night after having spent some time laid down to feel the noise in the San Juan River. Tomorrow in the forenoon it waits us for the visit to the Monument Valley and in the afternoon the trip to reach the Grand Canyon.

12° day: Tuesday August 14 th 2001: Monument Valley-Page.

The alarm clock is implacable at 6.30 o'clock. After a fast breakfast we direct there toward the Monument on the road already crossed before the evening. We arrive just in time to admire the dawn with the rays of sun among the very famous faraglionis. With a kind of jeep opened by 8 places (with us 6 there are two Japanese) we begin the visit that will last around two hours and a half. The driver is an old Indian navajo (here is everything managed by the Indians) that he succeeds in making to be understood slowly speaking. We arrive first to the John Ford point (place entitled to the famous director) from where a complete and extraordinary panning is had. To the than above we see the 3 sisters: three very similar rocks that you/they remember more a hand with sun three fingers to me. Afoot we also cross a lake in which him specchiano the rocks of forehead, and inside a small cave of the old Indian graffiti, with sketches raffiguranti the daily life of the Navajos. At the end of the turn we stop there to admire the ancient residences of the Indians. They are of the constructions in mud and straw (very resistant); they resemble to the distant one to the "casoni", residences typical of the coastal zone between Venice and Lignano Sabbiadoro.
To the inside together to a young Navajo, that manages the impromptu negozietto of Indian manufactured articles, finds an almost centenary oldie that for over mezz'ora it delights telling us us old histories of people and she. In the look a veil of sadness is noticed, that of a people of fierce and indomitable warlike reduced to live some charity of whom has arrived centuries after them. It tells us that currently in the valley they live around 6.000 families. There is a school for the boys and all the residences (almost all slums plastic or old trailers) they are deprived of electric light (what inside the Monument it doesn't arrive). This small number of Navajo still succeeds in living as over one hundred years ago; but the most greater part has sought far fortune in the great cities; finding for the more discrimination and alcohol. This last in the last years is turned into a real sore and it is among the most greater causes of death among the Indians. We greet the nice oldie and we are about there to greet the Monument Valley. This extraordinary place will always stay me in the heart. I think that many other places can hardly be found that is able to give the emotions that I have tried here. The depths silences, the loneliness and the endless horizons make this valley magic and magnetic and old Indian melodies they play again as to it stuffed to remember the bloodthirsty history of these earths. The white man has succeeded in exterminating the ancient inhabitants, but he will never succeed in cancelling their spirits that he anchors they flutter along the faraglionis. My thoughts along the road in direction Kayenta (Arizona) they have still remained for long minutes inside the valley and in the eyes of the old Indian. We reach Kayenta toward midday and we plunge there inside the first Mcdonald's. We eat some hamburgers in least times, it waits us in fact a long journey to reach the Grand Canyon. After having made the height we take the 160 knowing that for over 150 kilometers we won't see that desert. The 160 is an along rectilinear practicable also without the steering wheel and without the brakes from Kayenta up to Tuba City. We cross little autos and not even a house but the landscape and extraordinary. After a couple of hours we reach Tuba City sunny and sleepy town of province; the capital city of the tribe of the Hopis is considered, whose smaller reserve confines with that immense of the Navajos. The Hopis have always been of the unarmed agriculturists, their subjugation a rather simple practice revealed him for the conquerors. Also now their continuous reserve to shrink for the Navajos.
To Tuba City we find a big supermarket and we take advantage to restore our reserves of water of it. A street oretta stays us to reach the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately after one day of truce the time doesn't promise anything of good person.
To reach the Grand Canyon needs a minimum of preparation. Its immensity is something that he/she takes you for the throat and it doesn't allow yourself to breathe. You cannot do anything else other than to be in silence and to admire what the nature is able to create. And' so immense to seem false and unattainable. Far in the fund we admire the Colorado river, the craftsman together with the wind of this inimitable work of art. Going to direction of the Visitor center stops there in more panoramic points and Diego it pleases him in dangerous descents next to the precipice of the canyon with Federica that it uselessly tries to dissuade him/it. Seen Alexander the mystical place has the hair as Jesus of Nazareth (you see photo of group). Later around a hour the inevitable rain our believer companion of trip arrives unfortunately. Alexander and I close there inside the auto while the other ones are to the visitor center to book a motel to Page.
Ripercorriamo to bashful the road already done hoping that in the meantime you stop raining. Arrivals next to the exit toward the highway 32 stop there in a cafe-bazaar to refresh us and to purchase some souvenirs (really stuff from tourists). This stop is revealed then an authentic stroke of luck. The rain is stopped and, even if with a particularly cold wind, we have ever assisted to one of the most beautiful sunsets visas and even imagined not. I wish whoever to be able to assist to a sunset on the Grand Canyon just ended the rain with rainbows and uproarious horizons. We go out of the park in direction Page with to the shoulders the lights of an extraordinary twilight.
After a day massacrante we arrive destroyed to Page toward the 22 and, systematized the baggages to the Motel 6 (really nice) hungry and drowsy we found there toward a Pizza hut. Devoured an industrial quantity of pizza and swallowed some liter of beer the only proper place for us it is a mattress. We prepare there for the night with the senzazione to have lived one of those days of the life that are destined to remain irripetibili. Tomorrow it attends us another day all anything else other than restful with final destination Bryce Canyon.

13° day: Wednesday August 15 th 2001: PAGE-PANGUITCH

The alarm clock for once it is not to the dawn but toward the 8. Despite the pizza of the evening is still wandering about for our stomacis we are hungry. We find a place managed from Indian where, being festive day, a discreet number of Americans to Page for the weekend with so much of boat to the succession you/they are consuming their breakfasts (the lake Powell, huge and with notable sceneries, it is destination in the weekend for many Americans). Me, Alexander, Diego and Simona 1 typically opt as usual for a breakfast American and ipercalorica with notable repercussions on the liver. Concluded the hard-working culinary practice, before departing in direction Bryce Canyon we go to see the great dike on the lake Powell. To the Visitor Center Diego and I, perhaps for the festive air of the ferragosto, we amuse as crazy persons and with rather ambiguous attitudes. By the way the photo of Diego of the lake has also come perhaps rather well for my worth. The lake seen by the tall one of the dike is stupendous and the sceneries are really those of a film Western. Subsequently going however toward the shore we discover that is strongly polluted, so much from the bathing to be forbidden. Abdicated not the trip in boat for the elevated but prohibitive cost, we are ready to reach the Bryce Canyon that it will reveal him the nth one it covers uproarious of this trip. Taken the highway 89 after some kilometers we pass the border and we enter for the second time the state of the Utah. Later around mezz'ora we reach Kanab, small town that for natural sceneries as set has been used cinema of a lot of films Western, so much to have been called "the little Hollywood." We enter a particular shop in how much in the back we find a cinema set; with a 800 west typical town with so much of saloon, diligence, barber and bank. The shop is very particular for the number of typical articles on sale. From the Cd of music country to the attire from true cow boy (also for /their children). After some purchase we take back our road. As usual we take the daily dose of rain and also a block in full desert. After a few hours we arrive in proximity of the Bryce Canyon. We find a room in an attractive motel to Panguitch. Along the road we have seen the poster of a rodeo. Despite the tiredness we decide to go to see. Unfortunately we arrive when it is already everything ended. I disappointed we console there with an enormous beefsteak in a neighbor steak house. And' a very beautiful and cold evening (of however we find us to over 2.000 meters altitude), the sky swept by a light wind is a carpet of stars. Another splendid American day reaches its end. This earth for a long time dream for whole generations continually offers great feelings, perhaps more than for a particular beauty for what it represents and that has represented. Who loves the writings of Kerouac of trips on and down in America it is not able whether to try a strong attraction for the American road. The road not always and only a strip of asphalt edged by landscapes. A lot of times can represent very more: an ideal, a dream, an emotion, a lived history or to live. For Kerouac the road represented an escape, suffered and grandiose, sparkling and miserable from the daily life and from the society that it oppressed him/it. He/she anchors for many today can be so; when you take a road it doesn't owe us to necessarily be a point of arrival.
Returned to the motel aim the alarm clock to a terrible hour, the 5.30!!! but the dawn to the Bryce Canyon is not to lose.