Today is the day of my first helicopter ride! I am a little nervous as I can suffer from travel sickness but I have made sure that I have put my trust acupressure wrist bands.
First we have to go through the dreaded weighing…luckily it is kept discreet so only the cashier sees it. You get weighed so they can decide where to place you in the chopper to balance it all out…and boy did I get lucky! Not the heaviest but not the lightest either, so I ended up which what I think was the best seat in the house. front right with nearly a 180 view outside…
Left to right: Larry ” The Finisher”, Achim, Melissa, Me, Rachel and Lisa
The coolest profile picture I have had so far….
As I said before, there aren’t enough words to describe the experience…suffice to say that I loved every seconds of our 55 mins flight and wish it had been longer and that our pilot, although a thoroughly nice chap, had been a little more adventurous in his flying… I didn’t feel any motion sickness at all and instead I was awed and excited and amazed and even a little loss for words…believe me, that doesn’t happen very often.
Rick, our very competent pilot.
He had cool music playing on the headphones and he filmed the whole flight. We had decided to only buy one CD for the group and then copy it later as the DVD was about $20 and we thought it would be cheaper but I now regret I wasn’t the one to buy it as we didn’t get the chance to copy it whilst travelling and trying to sort this out now that we are all back home (and our group was very international).
So as they say a picture is worth a 1000 words…enjoy!
The Dragon tail
I have loads of them but I won’t bore you with more…You get the picture really (no pun intended actually) even if my images don’t always do it justice as I feel the colours are a little faded and they felt a lot more vivid in my memory. If you are going to the Grand Canyon, I really recommend that you splash out for the chopper tour, it is well worth it. And go for the long one (55 mins) as the price difference between and the 30 mns one isn’t huge and it is well worth it! I could have stayed up there forever…well maybe not forever but it definitely ended too soon for my liking.
Once back on the ground, we headed out to the park for a day of hikes, cycle treks or leisurely wanders (depending on the group). I went for the cycle myself as I could get my hiking fill at Yosemite and wanted to cover a variety of activities.
Bike rental is quite cheap actually and we took a half day rental. We elected to do the Hermit’s Rest trail which according to the guide takes 4hrs return. Now, a few words of advice: the Park prides itself for its environmentally friendly credentials and in most cases it works…except for their notion that you should buy refillable bottles instead of water bottles as there are water points throughout the park….that maybe so if you hike but it is not the case for the cycle tracks…except no one tells you that. We discovered it the hard way.
We set out enthusiastically with a 500ml bottle each first through the woods where we met some of the local wildlife.
An elk (for those like me, who are quite ignorant about these things). They are quite placid and you can get relatively close (within reasons) as they are quite used to humans.
Problems started with our first, and steepest hill. It took us about 20mins to “climb” it and nearly all of our water. We still thought at that stage that we could refill at the first view point….no such luck!
View from the first view point
The hiking trail view from across the gorge. Apparently it is as hard as it looks. The guys who decided to hike it really struggled with it (except for The Finisher who is just a hiking machine!), they had water refill station though…
Mr Piggy showing off…
Apparently I was quite a hit on that ledge. Well I say a hit…I mean people looked at me funny wondering what the hell I was doing lying on the floor trying to photograph a toy pig! Crazy people everywhere uh?
Left to right: Achim, Steph, Heather, Me, Melissa and Simon
At the top…having literally just made and getting ready to run for the water fountain! The first 500ml didn’t even register my lips and mouth were so parched!
Did they say refreshments? We had ice cream…we deserve it too!
Because it took us longer than expected to reach the top, if we wanted to be able to cycle back down, we needed to only have a short break before heading back. Melissa and I couldn’t face it, Achim and Simon decided to wait with us, Steph and Heather braved it…
Having decided to take the bus back, we had time to have a picnic, check out the souvenir shop (I bought a lovely native american inspired silver necklace in the shape of a dreamcatcher and some photo prints) and a few pictures to show we were there…
Buses there were awesome as you could attach your bike at the front. Unfortunately they could only take 3 of them at a time and we were 4. So we split in 2 groups. Melissa and I went first. It was a busy bus, so we didn’t sit together. I was sitting next to a few oldies and a nice old man started chatting to me. I have to say it was hard to concentrate on the conversation as the heat and exhaustion were finally catching up to me and as I naturally feel sleepy on buses, I felt my head droop a couple times.
We couldn’t stay on the bus the whole way back, so we still had to cycle the forest bit, only problem was that we had followed Steph on the way up so we weren’t totally sure of the way back. Luckily I do have a good sense of direction. I can’t read a map, but I have a good memory of landscape, particularly if I have done the route at least once….I did good, only took one wrong turn and I realised pretty much straight away.
We got back to the bike shop with 15 mins to spare on our booking and Steph and Heather had only been waiting for 20 mins. We joined them to wait for Achim and Simon who got back a little after time was up.
We were exhausted at this stage so decided to head back to the hotel and take a swim in the pool before going out to dinner. Simon decided to try and do part of the Angel hike (crazy dude!) and once back, Achim went to the Imax cinema. Steph, Heather, Melissa and I went to eat at the Yippee-ei-o!! steakhouse in Tusayan. We fancied trying a little western style. The menu was quite limited but for starters we decided to be adventurous…well Steph convinced us that it was a good idea to try rattlesnake…we weren’t totally convinced but as we were all sharing it, we thought ok…let’s do this….
Deep fried rattlesnake – before
Tucking in…
After….it was seriously foul!
No meat, lots of bones and the batter tasted old…basically we didn’t eat much on that and we were quite happy to see the rest of the dinner show up to take the bad taste away
12 oz steak with beans, corn on the cob, jacket potato and a salad…I left the sides out well except of the salad and potato and gave the steak a run of its money…still I couldn’t finish it. Lot of meat there.
After dinner we decided to go for a quick drink at the taqueria next to the hotel…for the first time, I had made the mistake of forgetting my passport. I still amuses me to get carded before I can order an alcoholic beverage….the waiter could obviously tell that I was way older than 21 so let me off and I had a beer. The day was taking its toll though, the conversation was quite sparse and the eyelids heavy…we didn’t linger too long before heading back to bed.
Next Chapter: Vegas Baby!
Chymeera vs The World 