Antelope Canyon "Grand ioses" extreme 15 000 kilometers, 58 days total, 6 Canadian provinces, 11 U.S. states and the trip coming to an end.
In Oregon and California, was the endless beaches extending along the cliffs. Bathing in water with a cold stings the skin, waves whose power sweeps dozens of sea lions along the coast in the company of great whales, hidden in the dangerous depths of the Pacific.
Then, turning a wild road, the hilly San Francisco and Golden Gate have caught our eye.
The red woods were touching the sky in turn allowed our dreams at night while camping. The rocks reminded us of those Yosemites the forest of Fontainebleau, only ten times larger and ten times higher, and where threatening Cougars (which we saw a trail of paw in the mud) reign supreme.
In Los Angeles, we saw some of the most famous places in the world - Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica - in the midst of the most massive traffic jam I known, in a nightmarish city that stretches over 120 km wide and has about fifty different neighborhoods.
Further down the coast, we went swimming on a beach where swimming leopard sharks (small and harmless) hidden in the tub sand. A few days later, a surfer filmed on the same beach the passage of a deadly killer and great white shark. A few miles south, in a quiet bay called the "small pool" by the locals, we went swimming among hundreds of people between pelicans and sea lions dived without fear of man, just meters away and have touched the finger of fish of all colors and all sizes in clear water and cold which caused me intense pain in the hand and a great fear because of the shock temperature.
Then it was the desert - Route 15 north, then Route 40, which crosses the U.S. from west to east. Hundreds and hundreds of miles without a single tree, a straight road and endless after which the extreme heat (40 degrees) made us see shimmering mirages, like layers of water on the asphalt. The inhospitable nature surrounding us has undoubtedly helped to better understand why some Americans are so fond of the big guns against the rattlesnakes (which we have fortunately not crossed) and lizards to 20cm long, including a specimen failed to pass under our wheels, and why they love the big trucks to pass over unpaved tracks of Indian reservations, American Indians who live in such poverty that obesity and substandard mobile homes because their lives in the desert - the only land we have wanted them. Unlike others, their mobile homes are not very mobile. The ones seen on the road, moved by trucks "oversize" are solely those of whites, richer, who can still afford to move. They are few in comparison with the crisis. Most now have to stay home, or even abandon their homes, which lie in the hundreds along the Route 40 and intermediate roads.
Route 40 is also the route of the greatest legends of Highway 66 to "On the Road" to the miners, not forgetting of course the Grand Canyon, its 450km long, 30km wide, 2000 meters deep and its thousands of years old. The Kaibab plateau which overlooks extends over most of Arizona and Utah, see more north and east, finally giving a little freshness to the desert and allowing some trees to grow. When you descend into the Grand Canyon on foot, what we did on the Kaibab Trail (watch vertigo!) It passes through layers of stone of different eras of Earth different colors, from cream to red, and changing vegetation. The temperature is also changing. 1 hours walk to the center of the canyon is from 25 to 35 degrees, and still is at sunset, where it gets a little cooler!
When we hit the road by car 2 days, we drive endlessly straight, to several thousand meters above sea level - strange feeling where the air pressure itself is different. Here, there are thousands and thousands of years, has plate tectonics raised without breaking, creating a plateau and canyons of the mountains rather than ... Why this phenomenon? It remains a mystery. In the midst of this strange landscape, others Canyons - Glenn Canyon North, but especially near the artificial Lake Powell, which extends its clear water dam in the midst of the intense desert (how cool in the water!) , buried the Canyons: Antelope Canyon and many others. Stones creased by wind and water from the Colorado River from 100 000 years. At the exit, the biggest "trading post" in the country - stores run by native Americans, who also hold all the territory around and charge huge amounts of money to enter the Canyons. Ground, rock, everywhere, and cacti. In August, they are covered with fruit, and these "prickle pears" are good to eat when you know remove the huge thorns, which my feet have paid the price in a moment of inattention.
is back on the shelf, it fell again, and it's back to the desert: Texas, New Mexico. Along Highway 40, we should follow fairly quickly now if we want a chance to enjoy the East Coast, and on vehicles, logos everywhere, rising, not "between" the trees, but instead of trees. Waffle House, McDonalds, Burger King .... I never have seen so much of my life. I now understand much better the interests of law that prohibits the display on the roadside in France. In the middle of brands, also advertising "unprecedented". To save those who can not find meaning in their lives amid the stones of capitalism and the surrounding desert, God, and the army. The posters advocating turn prayer or enlistment and newspapers on the corner say that the output of the U.S. military in Iraq is not necessarily a good thing. At university, Texas, stands for integer offer s'enroller having CARROUSEL, social security, the opportunity to travel around the world, a good retirement, not to mention the payment of fees universities (tens of thousands of dollars here), it would be the army, to Unbeknownst to the people, the last bastion of this "devil" of socialism? In any case, here, the elderly have no other places to meet and discuss the fast food ... not very local ...
Despite these extremes, the beauty of landscapes leaves us speechless. Leaving the air conditioning to 20 degrees restaurant chains of all kinds, we base the sun 35 or 40 degrees and can only leave us caught up in the endless horizon or, sometimes, canyons emerge in the distance. All this nature, hostile, however, is left alone by the inhabitants of the regions, whose lifestyle is not suitable. Huge areas are still free of human life, full of threatening beasts and sublime landscapes. While in Canada we showed signs "warning, crossing moose "or" bear crossing ", here are the wild horses that could cross the road, or mountain lions or bobcats.
Gradually, as we follow the road, these landscapes are changing, however. Finally, in Arkansas, we're starting to see some trees. The heat, it does not start. Exhausted and broken heat, we decide after 5 or 6 day crossing, attempting a "motel." Our good old Betty'm comfortable without air conditioning, days and nights are really hot. At the motel, all evoke the cliché - the building, employees, the huge room with two queen beds. But the cliché is good when you're tired, and we laugh. And the next morning, we smiled even more when you wake up in a torrential rain, as I've never not seen on other continents. All guests of the motel are blocked. Even with their pick-ups on-high, it rains too hard and there is too much water on the road to drive. Expected, therefore, watching TV - and I re-learn the art of zapping in a country where commercials run every 5 minutes for about a period of about 4mn. A program that lasts 30 minutes in France lasts 1hr here. In
TV reporting on Katrina and its devastation. On another channel, the weather tells us that a hurricane to form right now offshore. In my heart, I pray that arrive in time to visit the "outer banks" these sublime islands along the coast of North Carolina in a strip of land about 30-m in places, leaving just enough room to Highway 12 ascending to the north.
Finally, we will. I remember the pleasure, a few days ago, after the megalomania of the voyage to find the back roads of North Carolina. And find the story. The "small" story, for me this way a pilgrimage in the years 2002-2003 when I lived in Greenville, North Carolina, while my brother Tom lived in Durham, two hours west. We visit both campuses, find a sense of civilization. People seem thinner and healthier - illusion, perhaps, since here as elsewhere the poor lack access to care. Then came the "big" story that takes us on. That of the first settlers, that tells us with passion a "store" on Roanoke Island, the day after our arrival. Here, as early as 1585, Europeans were trying to survive in a difficult nature, and despite the pirates. While
the day we played in the rough waters and we were dragging a shot towards the shore with great shots and painful slaps in the back Sunday is going to visit because it is forbidden to swim so the sea is stirred with Earl and Hurricane Danielle arriving in the East. We take the time to talk with people of the island, including a Native American-Afro-American native of the island, which explains how this area once housed the slaves freed.
Two days later, here in New York after crossing the which is probably the longest and most stunning bridge-tunnel in the world, through the Chesapeake Bay, we learn from friends and the media that the islands of Carolina, where we came from, just as tourists were parties and the right temperature, make a weekend of incredible farnienete we learn that these islands are undergoing evacuation. The transition we expect the islands to the east of Boston is also compromised because of these hurricanes, so it's faster than we get back to Montreal, passing through downtown Boston very quickly and starting again on Thursday night order to avoid traffic jams on Friday which will involve the evacuees and those who go for three days during the weekend of Labor Day.
Incredible countries that the United States, where nothing gets done in a measured, but where everything is extreme, from nature to culture; incredible country where the change of life rhyme also with the stability of a millennium multiple nature, dangerous and amazing. The apartment where Gael welcomes us to Brooklyn, we hear the constant hum of the city of New York, a symbol of life that never stops on this continent. Eight years later, I found last night my friends in North Carolina in a small Japanese restaurant in the East Village - the land seems a little smaller after this trip, and extent of potential even greater.
