From wonders to glitter

Riding in one day through the Grand Canyon, Zion and then Las Vegas is a humbling experience. From the majesty of natural wonders to the ugliness of human deeds, I experienced both all the fascination I have for America and the dislike for some of its features. We went to the north rim of the Canyon which is much more peaceful and less touristy than the south rim where I had been five years ago. The riding through the forest before coming onto this big scar splitting the earth is truly gorgeous and the view from the north rim, which is higher than the southern one, goes for more than 60 miles. Looking at the Grand Canyon makes me keep quiet, at lost for words. And I struggle to write about it as well. May be it's the feeling to be brought back to the size of an ant, to be faced with an inverted mountain going so deep into the ground, the notion than time is for nature a different benchmark than for us and that we may be not truly belong to it.
Then Zion: There again it was my second time there and the same feeling that this land is almost biblical in spite of the total absence of human intervention. The eroded rock looks like a giant frozen wave and the valley opening slowly between the pink and orange dented peaks is like a guiding light (to anyone going to Zion, I strongly recommend entering the park from the east where the road zigzags through narrow canyons and exiting to the west where it opens into a big valley with the mountains slowly fading away). I guess others before me had those same feelings considering the name of the place. I could stay there for hours, days and years, looking at the slow variations in colors and the contrast between the red stone and the pale green of the trees clinging to the barren face of the mountains.
But we had decided to spend the night in Las Vegas and so did we. The night ride on Interstate 15 was not a thing of a pleasure, struggling to fend off trucks racing each other on the very twisty curves going through the Arizona mountains. But that allowed us to discover Vegas by night, in all its glittering attire under a perfectly shaped moon crescent. We rode down the strip, all geared up, seemingly as out of place as two fully dressed astronauts at a cocktail party in the company of an other long distance rider on a BMW K1200RS coming from Canada (the long distance motorcycle riders community is a small one and encoutering one another on the roads is always worth noting, except for Harley riders. You never know whether the bike has not just been unloaded from a truck and made like it had been ridden for miles...) .
We had booked a room at the Luxor and they apparently make everything possible to transform the check-in experience into a nightmare (may be they're taking their clues from airlines ?). Long lines at the desk, then parking lots miles away and pretty much nothing to carry your luggage to the room. I guess we could have used Valet Parking but they don't do it for motorcycles.
It has always been my idea than no one should ever spend more than 30 minutes in Vegas, riding, or driving, through it, preferably at night, and go. It's like a toy miniature train. They look awesome when they belong to somebody else but if you try to play with them, they never work. I don't understand why Vegas is the favorite vacation destination for more than half of Americans when their country harbors such natural splendors. And Vegas is nothing in itself, just a pale, comical copy of other people achievements around the world (including New York). But when it comes to this, I much prefer Legoland where kids can also pretend to have fun.
And yes, we gambled: ten bucks each in one armed bandits. Steve ended up with twenty and I with zero. To put it in an other way, he won a free tank of gas for the Ducati.
Oh, and one last thing: The air conditioning in the room sounded like a running diesel truck all night. I tell you, Vegas is just a fake, a glittering doublet (that's a fake diamond).
Now, back to the marvels of mother nature: Death Valley and then Yosemite. We going to camp out there (not in Death Valley, we not THAT mad, but in Yosemite) and I may not be able to update the blog for a few days.