Grand Canyon

Yes again. The Grand Canyon was just as I remembered it, just colder. There was a few inches of snow on the ground.  This time my grandparents and aunt were with us and we only stayed a few hours.  It went by really fast. Our itinerary was wake up a six and drive for two and a half hours. We took a helicopter ride (more on that later, it was awesome), did some sightseeing, then went to an old watch tower. The drive there was long and boring, like most drives, but when we got there it got more interesting. The entire reason we had to wake up so early was because we had a helicopter tour scheduled for early in the morning, and we were supposed to get there a half an hour early. We arrived on schedule and took off as planned. It was just me and my grandpa with a few other strangers. My aunt, mom, and grandma had no real interest in being 6000 feet in the air, and my dad gets sick in amusement parks. They missed out on something amazing. During lift off my knuckles turned white, but my mom said my face was completely lit up. It

felt like we were going in a & shape during liftoff, and it scared the living crud out of me.  We went for a few miles over forest, but at 90 miles an hour it passed by fast. My favorite part was when we reached the edge of the canyon and we dropped a little. It

wasn’t as dramatic as going into a nose dive, but suddenly we went from 50 feet in the air to 5000. Instantly after going over the edge my perspective changed completely. I wished my eyes were bigger to take in the view. At the beginning I was worried that the ride would be like an amusement park, constantly bumpy and swinging around, but it was as smooth as could be expected.  There was still the occasional drop that left my stomach about a foot above me which turned out to be pretty fun.  The part that scared me the most was the playlist. In between the

times our pilot was talking to us music was playing in our headphones. During takeoff the song “Ground Control to Major Tom” was playing. Seeing as that song is about an astronaut who cuts communications and goes into space I was a little worried because if our pilot decides to follow in his footsteps he will not float. The second song I recognized was “Hold Back the River”. This one seemed a little ironic since we were flying over one of the

strongest rivers in the world. The final song that I recognized was “Renegades”. This one wasn’t that scary, but at first I thought it was “Unsteady”, and that’s not the kind of news I want to hear from my pilot at 6000 feet.  Admittedly my anxiety may be coming from seeing so many helicopter scenes in James Bond movies. It retrospect it might not have been the best idea to watch “Spectre” right before the tour. The opening scene is with a helicopter. For anyone who doesn’t know what I am talking about I will give a link to the video of the scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrT9uOd8MAg  When we made it back to the landing pad we got a few pictures with the helicopter and went to see the Grand Canyon from the ground.  Needless to

say the views were not as great on the ground. Having already been there for a week we had already seen all the sights. Personally I don’t see how my aunt and grandparents could do the Grand Canyon in a few hours. It took me a week and I still feel that I could have stayed for another week or two assuming that it warmed up.  It’s a little hard to camp in snow. I would have liked to whitewater raft the canyon, hike to the north rim, and stay at Phantom Ranch at the bottom. Honestly there are so many things I would have liked to do, so I plan to come back someday.  On our way out we stopped at an old watch tower. It was closed so we walked out to it and walked back.