An early rise saw us blasting down the highway towards Grand Canyon National Park. Despite best intentions we can never seem to return all recently used RV items to their various nooks and crannies. And with a helicopter canyon flight booked for 11AM, our campsite departure at 10AM, with 55 miles to drive, was pushing it! But the MRT cruises at 70+ so no worries there. And despite best efforts, our communication-challenged buddies were offline and we had no idea what their plans were beyond meeting at our campsites later in the day. Who knew they were hanging out with the Flintstones.
And so we made it, just! We paid extra bucks to ensure we could ride up front. And we had chosen a company flying Eurocopters which I was happier about than 30 year-old Bell products. We took off with the nose down and flew low over the take-off area with theme music from Top Gun blasting through our headphones. Maybe the older Bells would have been a better choice after all… But the experience was amazing despite flying in these things with work regularly.
As we approached the rim of the canyon the pilot (who appeared to be 12 and was hoping facial hair would develop soon) announced over the music and said we would shortly experience perhaps the most amazing view of our lives when we crossed from our 300 foot altitude over the trees to over 5500 feet above the canyon without the pilot doing anything different. Despite the noise of the helicopter you can still hear people gasp as we view the canyon in all it’s splendor for the first time. The pictures don’t do it justice of course and the video below is such low resolution it isn’t the best but you can guess the appreciation of what we were experiencing we hope.
Upon returning with large s#@$-eating-grins we headed for Grand Canyon National Park and our campsites. Checked in but no mates yet. Headed for the grocery store (you can imagine the prices when you are a captive audience in a National Park like GC with no competition – $20 gets you a bundle of 5 small fire logs and a bag of ice) and real food was… well don’t get me going, but it was expensive. As we returned to our campground area there was Phil & Diane and Jane & Ike checking in. All very exciting. we setup camp and unpacked and our MRT was anointed with the very expensive letra-set Phil had brought for the occasion. All very wonderful.
MRT Anointing
The rest of the day was hiking the rim areas and trying not to walk along the paths with our mouths open continuously. Every angle provides you with a new vista. Amazing! We leave it to the eloquence of Phil to describe the rest.
As of our unification with the other RTs we will now take a back seat to Phil in our blog entries but will assist Phil as able.
incredible video of Canyon – much appreciated!