So we rose ridiculously early and left the California behind and on Monday flew to Las Vegas, Nevada. It was a great flight and lasted all of 45 mins. No sooner had we landed than we left and drove into Arizona and to the Grand Canyon. The high temperatures of Vegas soon dropped as we headed to the south rim. It was 4.5 hours of driving through desert and monsoon – we hadn’t realised that the Grand Canyon got most of its rainfall in July and August, we do now! The sky goes from blue to black in minutes and then back to blue. The news sadly reported some deaths from flash floods in the state
We arrived safely and went for our first view of the canyon. Awesome, stunning, breathtakingly beautiful – postcards and photos don’t do it justice. The whole area is a national park and wild elk just walk up to the hotel. Click here to see them
On Tuesday, for the 2nd day running we were up ridiculously early and checking in at 05:30 with Grand Canyon airlines for a 13 hour trip. We started at 06:20 with a 1 hour flight over the Grand Canyon – awesome. See if you can spot the photo of me flying the plane! Then we did a 1 hour jeep safari of antelope canyon and then a 3.5 hour float down the Colorado river on a raft- a gentle raft of course given my record last year on jet ski! We then had a 3 hour coach trip back around and up the canyon. There were of course plenty of stops along the way
The raft trip was amazing – we started at the Glen Canyon Dam which is only a few feet shorter than the Hoover Dam and forms the 2nd largest reservoir in the US. The temperature at the bottom of the dam was easily 38C. To see the canyon from above and then below was phenomonal. The canyon walls rose from 500ft to 2200ft. The raft was slow enough for me not to be ill and our tour guide was so knowledgeable – she showed us the “petroglyphs” drawn by the Indians thousands of years ago and we heard a native Indian tribe playing their Indian drums and pipes.
It was so hot that virtually everyone dipped their feet in the cool water and the kids and some adults went in further. Only one adult went in fully clothed trainers and all – guess!
To see who that was then click here.
We were so lucky with the weather. Perfect for the flight and raft trip. Then another monsoon, sandstorm and hailstorm about 30 mins into the coach ride home. There was hail by the side of the road that was so large it looked like snow – we travelled over 5000 miles for this weather!
Today we had a lie in and have just done some walking around the rim of the canyon – a gentle 3 -4 mile walk and are resting before our sunset off road jeep safari later this afternoon. So far the weather is holding for tonight … . but who knows!