Fourth day, May 31: from Gallup to the Grand Canyon

Leaving from Gallup after a few miles we stopped to see the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert: we parked the motorcycles in the stalls of a panoramic place and with a few steps on foot we arrived at Kachina Point, a small viewpoint overlooking the immensity of the desert full of incredible colors and with traces of petrified logs, dating back 225 million years ago.

After a stop to take pictures near the scrap of a 1932 Studebaker (only the rusty body and the frame remains), in memory of when Route 66 crossed the Petrified and the Painted Desert, Stefano and I went ahead before the group along the road to lurk at the height of the colored reliefs called Tepee (in fact, they remind the curtains of the Natives of the Grand Plains, not being present in the culture of this region). As the others left the place of the Studebaker, a few minutes away from each other, and as they passed in front of me I took the photographs. My motorcycle ride is missing because I would have had to pick up my bike, go back and run again in front of the Teepees.

Again, along the way we stopped in Holbrook, a town also famous for its Wigwam Motel whose rooms are shaped like Indian Tepee but are made of masonry. Here my bike was embarked on the trailer because the rear tire was too deflated and I got in the van because the spare motorcycle that was on the trailer was mine that was leaking oil from the first day. Then we stoped at Winslow, who became famous for the verses of the Eagles song “Take It Easy”, at the “Standing’ on the Corner Park”, or the street corner mentioned in the song. Here are two iron statues: one represents a “founder”, a street artist with his guitar near a lamppost; the other, set up in 2016, represents Glenn Frey of the Eagles, author of the song with Jackson Browne. The red pick-up you see in the photos is “fake”, it’s part of the Winslow corner scene. We ate a decent sandwich with chips skewered on a skewer at Relic Road. Stefano, in the meantime, had inflated the tire of my motorcycle, so I could resume the journey while driving.

In the afternoon we arrived at the Grand Canyon Village, located a few kilometers from the South Rim of the Canyon. Here we took the rooms and went down after about an hour to go see the sunset on the edge of the Grand Canyon. And here stops this part of the story because there are no words to describe the beauty of the place! I can only say that we have been on the edge of the precipice for a long time, that the big clouds have prevented us from enjoying the sunset hour to the fullest, but the show is fantastic. Only a very small part of the Colorado Grand Canyon was in front of our eyes: the length of the Canyon, in fact, is 446 kilometers, it is from 500 meters to 29 kilometers wide and is up to 1800 meters deep! For the series – everything in America is huge, gigantic, spectacular or spectacularized.

We had dinner early for two reasons: the first, we have dinner early here; the second, the next day we wake up early to go around the Grand Canyon by helicopter! In fact, the morning after very early departure from the Red Feather Lodge towards the Grand Canyon helicopter flight camp: we entered the center, they weighed us to group us according to weight and we followed a briefing assisted by a short video about the helicopter flight, finally they provided us with an emergency kit (!). After a short wait in groups of five they made us wait at the gates of the flight camp. As the helicopters arrived we boarded, I, probably thanks to my height, was so lucky to be assigned to the seat next to the pilot! The takeoff was very quiet, almost an elevator, we flew over a long plateau with sparse trees and tracks tooked by quads or off-roads. Towards the edge of the Canyon the pilot inserted a soundtrack with the Ride of the Walkyries, it seemed to be in the movie “Apocalypse Now”! Wonderful spectacle, the Grand Canyon is truly boundless, richly colorful: for those who know these things you can see the different geological eras in the rock formations.

From here we left to face the next stage, now we have left New Mexico and we are several kilometers in Arizona, we are approaching the middle of the journey.