The View From Above

In recent years, people have started to notice that Las Vegas is only a few hours away from some of the American Southwest’s most spectacular country. The Grand Canyon, Zion, and Death Valley are two to five hours away if you’re driving–but why drive when you can take a helicopter? Last week I flew into the Grand Canyon on a TourGuy.com helicopter tour. My evening journey to Arizona and back reaffirmed my opinion that a good tour is a worthwhile investment of a traveler’s time and vacation dollars, not to mention that it’s wickedly fun to ride in a helicopter.

Tours can provide transportation, information about your destination, and even food. That means you get to focus on nothing but enjoying the sights. It was a pleasure to let a trained professional navigate the Las Vegas Strip traffic, and in short order we were in Boulder City, where a helicopter was waiting to fly us over Lake Mead and into the Grand Canyon.

Six of us paid close attention to Pilot Jen, who gave us instructions about how to use a life preserver and where the first aid kits and air sickness bags were. She also gave us her ultimate two rules: 1) Don’t touch anything; and 2) No screaming. Then we climbed inside, strapped ourselves into the seats, and put on our headsets. Pilot Jen kicked on the helicopter, and we started hovering over the runway. I did a quick second check on the location of the air sickness bags, and then Pilot Jen lifted us into the sky. The sensation of floating made me want to shout out “Whoo hoo!” but I was pretty sure that violated the “no screaming” rule. We were traveling at 150 mph, but it felt like we were barely moving.

Shortly after we left the airport, the blue waters of Lake Mead stretched out before us, although the lake is so large that even in helicopter we only saw a small portion of it. Lake Mead’s white “bath tub ring” shows how low the water level has fallen, but from the air it had a certain kind of beauty, in sharp contrast to the blues and greens of the lake. Hoover Dam and the by-pass bridge looked impressive from the air, and everyone onboard got busy with their cameras.

Lake Mead unfurled beneath us as we flew toward the western portion of the Grand Canyon. This section of the canyon is on Hualapai land, and it’s where the Skywalk is located. The sun was setting as Pilot Jen guided us into the canyon, the multi-colored cliffs bursting into their afternoon colors and the Colorado River flowing below us. There was no need for conversation between any of us onboard–just lots of grins and picture taking.

We set down on a mostly flat piece of land at the bottom of the canyon. The sun was still catching the tops of the canyon walls, some 4,000 feet above us. Below our picnic spot, the Colorado placidly rolled by. At sunset, the temperature was perfect. I could have easily stayed at the bottom of the canyon until the moon rose. But we had to get back to Las Vegas, which meant more time in the helicopter–which was just fine, in my opinion. After our champagne picnic, we climbed back into the helicopter for our ride back to town. Pilot Jen started up the copter, the blades began whipping overhead, and then we were rising out of the Grand Canyon, floating up into the sky, flying toward the setting sun as it lit up the clouds in gold and yellow.

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All pictures courtesy of Terrisa Meeks