Oh man what a day! I was up at sunrise for an early departure to the Grand Canyon. After popping my head outside after waking, it was pretty bloody obvious that it was below freezing outside. After checking the Weather Channel, it was confirmed – only 27’F, which is a couple of degrees below 0’C. Considering I had an over an hour ride ahead of me and up a bloody mountain... I thought I would hang around a little bit and let the sun warm the place up. Hmmm – this is a good time to wash Bonnie with some hot water. Hotel rubbish bins do come in handy hey! After an hour or so, we were ready to burn. The ride from Flagstaff to the Tusayan (the closest town to the south rim) was through beautiful Pine forest and went through an elevation over 8000ft. Surprisingly it wasn’t anywhere as cold as I thought it was going to be. Arriving at Tusayan at about 10:00am, I had made plans the night before to see the Canyon as fast as I can and then make a departure for Zion National Park to the north by 1pm, as this ride was just over 4 hours and I really wanted to get there before sunset, as it’s through forest and the Deer and Elk are a problem around this area... a bit like Roos. Imagine a Roo with Antlers jumping into you – Spike! After looking around the Visitor Centre at all the different activities you could do, it finally dawned on me – why am I in such a rush? This is one of the greatest places in the world, stop and suck it in. So what would be a super cool thing to do? To Helicopter into the Grand Canyon, of course! Considering I have never been in a Chopper before, doing it for the first time at the Grand Canyon is as probably as good as it’s ever going to get! So sign me up for the best Chopper ride you’ve got please. I was in luck, the ‘Supreme deluxe this is gunna cost you a freaking packet!’ flight had a spare seat at 12:00. So I was straight off down to the airport just a couple of minutes down the road. Man did these Choppers look the bomb. Red, sleek and real fast bloke! So after using a slight dose of my Aussie charm, the girl behind the counter had me locked in and sitting beside the pilot – Beauty! I was a little nervous on take-off, but probably more excited than anything else. You see, because at this point I had still not seen the Canyon at all and I was about to see it for the first time by diving off the edge in a Chopper – yeeha!!! After takeoff, we flew along the forest at only about 200ft above the tree tops and still quite some way from the edge and hence we still couldn’t really see the canyon, believe it or not. I didn’t understand why we weren’t going straight for it. But after flying for about 5mins over the forest, our pilot turns straight for the Canyon and stars the music from ‘2000 Space Odyssey’ in our headsets. Then in time with the building music, we fly straight over the edge of a 6000ft drop – Bam! Welcome to the Grand Canyon. My eyes nearly fell out of my head. I didn’t know what to do, look around or take photo’s. This place is E N O R M O U S!
Anyway.. I would like to write more, but it’s 6:30am and the sun is coming up and I want to get to the rim to get some sunrise shots. I am so excited to be here at the Grand Canyon – I have just achieved a major goal of this entire trip.
Enjoy the pics.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jamesc71/33GrandCanyon
J
