Through the immense Northwest

 

After the September 11 entry to the United States will probably become more secure, but it is much more exhausting. The security controls that we face before we embark on the Frankfurt - San Francisco force us to an endless row, culminating with a detailed inspection, including personal searches, from across the ocean the crowd of travelers. After crossing the forks and finally the plane, 11 hours later, America. A board, of course, the usual form of Immigration, asking you if you are a terrorist, if drug shops or transport nuclear bombs. Having always responded with great sincerity, we have taken on board safely.
In controls, it seems, have become good and timely, but the organization is always the same, and so when we put foot on land, our luggage is not there. 'It finished in New York - they say -, you have to wait until tomorrow. " A little evil, we are in San Francisco.

23/9, FOG AROUND THE GOLDEN GATE

After an agitated night, by force, in Italy (and for our bodies) was the day, we rise early and depart for our first real day of vacation. Baggage there are no tracks, but we do not care. Breakfast plentiful and very hot because we have already tasted the wind chill that comes from the sea whipped the bay despite being only September 23 and then visit to Union Square, the central square of a city that appears now unmistakable and beautiful. This area is full of luxury hotels, shops and restaurants, but the famous hills that we have all seen on TV making corrugated landscape here in the center. To renounce this first round to take the Cable Car, the famous trams which can be raised practically on the fly to engaging external handrails, and we decide to walk to the sea. We wander across Chinatown (shops and restaurants, shops and restaurants) as the sun finally triumphs and makes the air much more bearable. Indeed, shortly after we start to sweat, because to arrive at the port should trot a lot, up and down the hills of the city.
Towards 11.30 calling at Pier 39, certainly the most famous pier of the port, where we expect, as always, shops and restaurants, but also a fantastic view: in fact we are at the heart of San Francisco Bay, directly opposite the island of Alcatraz, once home of the prison, and left the Golden Gate, perhaps the most famous bridge over the world. Boats are not particularly expensive but not particularly attention offered to take a trip to the Bay for a decent price, and so we decide to go. Circumnavigating Alcatraz, taking a lot 'of photos to the ruins of the prison (it has never escaped anyone, tell, and it is not hard to believe), then we arrive at the Golden Gate. The area of the bridge, but only you really, is prey to a dense fog that when we arrive with the boat, completely surrounding us. The sun disappears, the wind gets up and becomes cold, and left the sound of a siren crazy warns us that the bridge, even though virtually no one sees more, it's still there, right above us.
Once the trip, with frozen hands and noses come back to port, where after a well-deserved meal of fish (good and not too expensive, $ 36 in two) shoot some 'other photos of the sea lions who nap all lazy and quarrelsome 'interior of the piers. First to greet the Pier 39 and return to our hotel, this time using the Cable, we stop to buy some 'fruit: for 4 peaches, 2 pears and a bunch of grapes, we are asking $ 15. Auctions, unfortunately.
Back at the hotel warned us that the baggage there are tracks for luck and in the hand we have all the necessary (toothpaste, toothbrushes, combs, etc..), And a first gear, so we can sit tight for a while. But when the day is not nothing, 'Sorry, we do not know where "is the laconic reply of the Lost and found, we start to nerves. A thousand phone calls do not lead to anything, and then decide not to destroy us and the holidays start. Again Union Square, a few shops (Niketown, Italian designers unapproachable, Disney and similar, while the money change master), then choose to make a jump in the Downtown, to discover what the city outside the traditional tourist routes. Take the metro and go south toward the Golden Gate Park. Then up the city on foot, for over an hour and a half. A route winded debate, a whole up and down the hills, but it offers an unforgettable insight into the city streets drittissime, which wind for hundreds of meters of climbs and descents that enable you to see miles of countryside. Amazing also houses some colorful, others pastel, all low, of wood, with a small porch and steps at the entrance. Many of these homes, even entire streets, showing off the rainbow flag, the flag of gay pride: designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, gay artist was born here, you immediately become a symbol of sexual freedom. Once the tour, we tired to eat a pizza and then go back to the hotel.

25/9, GOING TO OREGON

The next morning still no news of the bag: it is now a trickle, and we decide to give up. "Send it in Italy, if you find it, or keep it in San Francisco until our return": with these words frees us and we leave. Bought a 'linen, two sweatshirts, socks and shirts, and rented the car (a Dodge Intrepid with astonishing speed automatic for about $ 50 a day), aiming the muzzle toward the north through the city, passing over the Golden Gate ( zero emotion, too much traffic and fog), along Oakland and Berkeley (home of the famous university) and start the race to the Northern California and Oregon, our new goal. After a half day's drive and 400 miles round (about 650 kilometers) arrive in Medford, where to sleep in a Motel 6 (a chain of cheap and good quality).
The next morning, after a couple of hours a magnificent road, which winds in a huge forest of tall evergreen trees, we arrived at Crater Lake: a giant extinct volcano, whose crater is home to a lake in which center is an island. The lake, an intense blue ever seen, has an average depth of about 400 and the maximum is 6 miles wide, about 10 kilometers. Measures, numbers that do not explain how imposing, majestic, impressive.
Exhausted in the morning tour we head towards the east: will the other 400 miles inland Southern University. The 650 kilometers of our most stressful careers of tourists: the meadow, yellow, flat and always the same, where the roads drittissime seem never to end, you literally swallows. You can run as you, and we did, because nothing and no one held up, but you seem to be always in the same place. Miles and miles in this way, hours spent in this campaign, without anything that breaks the monotony of the landscape. Until, just before seven in the evening, we come to Ontario, right on the border with Idaho. Dinner, and then to bed. But not before having set the clocks because we have abandoned the zone of Pacific Time (nine hours less compared to Italy) to enter the Mountain Time (one hour ahead).

28/9, THE GEYSER AT YELLOWSTONE

The next morning we get up early and, after a bad breakfast, we depart from Yellowstone National Park there are about 350 miles away, and we are anxious to get there. The road is good and the scenery much more varied: corrugated, green, then yellow, orange, and red fire colors of autumn are on fire and made the pleasant drive in the area.
The Idaho offers an interesting landscape, but no place that really worth the trouble to visit the only curiosity is the Moon Crater, the crater of the moon. One area where the land is completely black and crumbly, almost sandy, evidently of volcanic origin.
In the afternoon we enter Montana, the temperature and the trees bear witness that we begin to grow at 15.30 we are in West Yellowstone, beautiful town that is located at the west of the park, at over 2,000 meters in height. Altitude that you hear, even on the skin: the cold stings. After a quick trip to the initial part of the park ($ 20 entry, but the ticket is valid one week), enough to see the first great American bison fording a river, let's look for a hotel. We choose the Fairfield Inn: very typical, wood, intimate, especially hot in the rooms because the air conditioning shoots hot air. Relax, let's eat. We offer bison meat is excellent.
The next morning we return to the park. Time five minutes and we are stuck in a traffic jam: the fault of the bison, of course, that rather than simply to cross the road, they decide to go in our direction, occupying both lanes. After ten minutes pass ... bison, in the midst of these beasts that can reach the height of a man, at last we can do off and start afresh. It will be a wonderful day, where we almost 300 kilometers, partly in the snow, boundless in Wyoming, in a wild and fascinating, its forests, waterfalls, lakes, animals of all kinds (eagles, deer, elk, spotted a wolf and black bear) and geysers. Already, Yellowstone is famous for its numerous springs of hot sulphurous water: there is a po 'everywhere, but the most impressive is called Old Faithful. Every 94 minutes, with great accuracy, it shoots a jet of boiling water over 30 meters high. A show that we share with hundreds of other curious people.
Once the visit to the park, which still bears the scars of a fire that in 1988 it destroyed 36% of the total area, leave. Not before he had fought with other bison, apparently unaware that the rules of the road, to get green light to the West Gate.

1/10, FINALLY NEVADA

The morning after pushing the idea of going again to the north, in the heart of Montana, to visit Little Big Horn, where the Indians, alleluia, played with the blue jackets Custer, matching over 250. Unfortunately, the baggage of history has made us lose time, and we can not even go to the east. So we head south and leave for what will be the longest shift of the whole trip: 570 miles (about 920 kilometers) on I-15, a highway straight, fast and not very busy that allows us to cross again the Idaho (but from north to south) and throughout Utah (including Salt Lake City, capital of the state). No intermediate steps that give the status of the Mormons, though beautiful, have already visited on a previous trip. Sleep in Cedar city, small towns and charming southern Utah, and the next morning, after crossing the border with Nevada, at 10:30 this is Las Vegas. Here too we have been, but the incredible Las Vegas Boulevard, with its huge and extravagant hotels, can not fail to be surprised again. We decide to stay in Luxor, Egyptian-style hotel. For $ 60 per night (a lovely double room with two double beds) sleep in the pyramid, the 26th floor. To get there you do not use the lifts, but the inclinators because, rightly, in a building just as you climb diagonally. A surprise is the fact that the pyramid is hollow and that the rooms are huddled outside the walls, and when you exit from your room you find yourself in a corridor that looks out over the void: in a hole for you to 70-80 meters, and then Egyptian rebuilt a village where you can find restaurants, shops and, as yet, the usual casino. Las Vegas is full of hotels like this one, huge, surreal, each with its own feature: the Venice, the Ponte di Rialto, San Marco and the canals for the gondola (the Japanese in a row to get a ride), with the Paris Eiffel Tower, the great Caesar's Palace in the Roman Empire (which are building next to a well Colosseo), New York with the Statue of Liberty, the Exalibur with its colorful towers (we stayed there in 1999), l ' Treasure Island with a lake and galleons, the new Alladin with the storm that is raging inside, and many others. Each hotel is a kind of city we have in our estimated there were approximately 4,000 rooms (the confirmation via the Internet, I 4200), then five restaurants, a self-service giant, some twenty shops. And a Wedding Chapel for those who want to get married in Nevada (we counted five weddings in two days), where everything is easier. Even divorce, of course. Each hotel has its inevitable style pools, and we take advantage of the three (surrounded by colonnades and palm trees) that are available to clients of Luxor to relax and recharge the batteries in preparation for the return to base.

3/10, LEAVING LAS VEGAS

The next morning as we prepare to leave, on TV show gives the usual preacher who had already noticed a few days earlier: it is called Benny Hinn (unintentional humor?), Dresses like a dandy, but all in white, and in front of thousands of people make every kind of miracle. To go to the people sitting on wheelchairs, it heals with other killer diseases. But most of all have fun and make them faint, tens simply tapping on the forehead. A large, well expected in Europe, say the spot for the month of November.
Goodbye forever Benny leave Las Vegas, strangely in the rain. Judging dall'arido desert surrounding the city for hundreds of miles, is a rare event. We walk down a long stretch along the Death Valley, so named because it was the tomb of so many Mexican immigrants who were seeking safe passage to travel to California, immersed in fog. At noon we are on the edge of the huge military zone, where in the past have been some nuclear tests. All of a sudden low and parallel to the road we encounter a huge military plane carrying a strange device under a wing. But we were not its goal, because it flies over lazy and leaves.
In early afternoon we reach the Sierra Nevada, an imposing mountain range that separates California from the rest of America. The step that we choose is in the Yosemite, another national park. Nice, but after seeing Yellowstone pales. Here we meet again the snow, but the temperature is acceptable. It is decidedly pleasant once you get off the mountains and arrived in the plains. Tracy to sleep in a Motel 6 strangely dirty, where a group of Mexicans, are disturbing, if the walk through the night. Our last, unfortunately, the United States, the day after we arrive in San Francisco, returned the car (after almost 4500 kilometers) and go to the airport. The baggage is there that we wait, come back home with us, now useless, but unharmed.