The Grand Canyon
Today I helicoptered over the Grand Canyon and what an amazing experience it was. Both Chris and Marie had both been and seen the GC, so today it was my turn.
We flew out over the Hoover Dam which is a mind blowing feat of engineering and without meaning to be - quite pretty.
This is a natural plateau that military people used to use to train pilots to land on aircraft carriers. If you over-land, you're still going to fall off the edge, but I guess you'll be dry.
I'm here..... I did it..... Yay me!
It was such a beautiful day. The temp was a bit chilly in the canyon, but the sun was shining and it was just breathtaking. We landed on the Native American reserve side of the river and had a little picnic.
Including a little champas.
We hung around for about 20 minutes, downed our nibbles and got back on the chopper and got the hell out of there.
There are funny little water holes like this dotted around between the canyon and Las Vegas. They attract a whole range of wildlife from birds to bison.
The landscape here is beautiful, for lack of a better word. The water, over the last million and a half years, has carved its way through the rock leaving the ground looking like a dry creek bed, but when the water runs through, it is so dry that it doesn't soak into the ground, it just runs down in to the lake.
The water level has been dropping recently and the powers that be in Nevada and Arizona have been trying to work out what they'll do for all their power and energy needs when the levels get too low. So they've started putting in these solar panels - good idea!
This was our 12 year old pilot, Jamison from Utah and next to him is Carlos, a Polizia from Brazil who was in Vegas for the National Gun Convention. We also had two couples from Saskatchewan, Canada who were in Vegas for the Curling Championships - North America Vs the rest of the world. Apparently there were Olympians in town, but these peeps were just spectating and obviously big fans.
This looks a little bit like the boot of Italy.
That's Vegas in the background. It is a city literally in the middle of nowhere!
To the right of the big long road there that you can see on the left of the picture is the Downtown area, which is original site of Las Vegas and is now home to the older casinos, and Freemont Street. It's pretty seedy if I'm honest with you. Yes, seedier than the Las Vegas Strip...
...which is on the right of the middle road.
So that was my trip. It was about an hour ride out to the canyon, 20 minutes for picnic and champers and an hour back. I didn't feel nauseous at all - Bonus.
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