Day 328, 28 May 2013, Grand Canyon, Arizona (There, and you thought we were in Vegas!) On the basis that we really only want to visit Las Vegas once, and the thought of being cooped up in a bus for an 8 hour roundtrip and 4 hours in the blistering noon heat on the ground at the Canyon was incomprehensible, we gave up and threw money at the problem. What problem? How to see the Grand Canyon in the most time effective way possible. And the queasiest. As it turns out, the turbulence we felt when we flew into Vegas was a mere hint of the fun to be had taking a heli-ride to the Grand Canyon. But the temporary motion discomfort (euphemism of the year) was worth every penny and it took around three hours door to door to have a 90 minute flight to the Canyon and back. There was a brief stop for fuel at one point where we played musical chairs - which was fine - out of the seven passengers James and I were up the front for 80% of the trip - and the views were astounding. He has a much stronger stomach than I do, so I just followed the mantra "Look at the Horizon" and took lots of photos. Though it was a near run thing when the pilot started bouncing the bird up and down to simulate sunrise... daft man - he would have been cleaning it up. Huge fun, great way to do it and we were both glad we hadn't booked anything afterwards... It was a quiet but happy ride back to the hotel (on the ground this time - but we did wave to the hotel when they flew us over the Strip on the way back). 9 pm? Early you might say, but what a day!
PS - we used Maverick and they were worth every penny - Slickest operation in town. Newest helos (35 of them. Almost US$2.6 million each. Pilots. etc etc... Must be doing something right). Even educated us on the geological factors that contributed to the Canyon's formation and lots of useful info about Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam. Check out the album for more photos.