Freakin’ big hole in the ground

It’s an early 6am pick-up for our tour to the Grand Canyon and after enjoying temperatures in the mid-20’s it is surprisingly chilly - but it’s sure to be really hot in the middle of the desert- right? 

There’s only 12 of us on the tour - including a couple from Melbourne and we are told to expect spectacular scenery for the 5 hour drive to the southern rim of the GC.  Can’t really tell you much as we both promptly fell asleep until we got to the first pit stop and then I again fell straight asleep until we reached Williams Arizona.  We got out of the mini bus and it was freezing - I spent the 30 minute stop trying to find a shop selling cheap tracky dacks to cover my legs.

Whenever I told people that we were hiring a Harley in the US for 2 weeks everyone asked if we were doing Route 66 which I always answered with an eye roll and emphatic NO - oops!  Ok - in my defence, we weren’t going to ride Route 66, but I didn’t know that we would be travelling down part of it to the Grand Canyon - my bad.

Williams was just shop after shop of tacky Route 66 souvenirs - and of course I bought some (but  they didn’t warm me up )

From here it was another hour or so to the GC (and yes more sleeping for me)  and we were the only ones that were doing a helicopter trip over the canyon so were dropped off at a building in the middle of nowhere.  At this stage they didn’t know if they were flying due to wind?? so we had to bide our time checking out the Indian Knick knacks

We were given the ok (although the flight was reduced from 45 to 30 minutes - no refund) and soon we were getting ready to fly.....Luckily peter and I scored the front seats and it was freakin’ awesome!

There should be a video above but I probably buggered it up! 

The vastness of the GC is indescribable - it’s just freakin’ BIG

After our oh too short flight we joined the rest of the gang at the overlooks to check out other angles.  We were gobsmacked about the lack safety barriers - if this was in Australia we would have been behind 6 foot wire fences and back 30 metres from the edge!  There is absolutely nothing in most of the areas between standing on the edge and a sheer drop of 1000ft+

By this time it has warmed up a little - if you were in the sun - but there was a very chilly wind.  After a total of 2 hours at the freakin’ big hole we were back on the bus and more sleep for me ( it was all very exhausting) and back to the bright lights of Vegas.