Hitting the Heights!

The day has finally arrived. We have booked our helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon (months in advance, all paid for and confirmed earlier in the week). I have my camera – all charged up – and a spare memory card. We’ve had breakfast. We are both sitting at the entrance of our timeshare office.
Waiting for the minibus (minivan) to take us to the airport.
And it is late.
I phone up the helicopter people.
“The driver is held up in traffic. He will be a little bit late, but he is on his way …”
And, eventually, the bus/van turns up.
“Sorry I am late. Our driver didn’t come in to work today, and I am having to take his place.”
Ah well! I did tip the driver when we got there, but did advise him about getting excuses straight! No sense spoiling a nice day.

After the compulsory safety lecture, the weigh-in (anyone over 250 pounds pays 50% more) and the compulsory extra airport charge, we were escorted out to the flight line. No idea who Mr. McCarren was, but it’s a nice little airport.

There were five passengers in our helicopter. Me, the wife, a brainless bimbo and boyfriend (or husband, if his luck had deserted him) and their tag-along female friend. I was the only one with a professional camera, so, naturally, I was stuck in the middle in the back, with the wife on my left and tag-along on my right. The bimbo sat in the middle, at the front with boyfriend on her left. I presume that the pilot reckoned on getting a bigger tip from bimbo and boy.
Nope. Never works that way.

Soon, we were up, up and away. We soared over the Luxor and headed for Lake Meade. Las Vegas, from the air, consists of The Strip and a flat nothing filled with look-alike homes made of tickey-tacky. (No fears! You’ll get to see the ORIGINAL boxes made of tickey-tackey later).

First noteable sight was Lake Las Vegas. Not much of a lake, but the money down there was incredible! Did they really need to build a life-size bridge like the one in Venice, just to cross the creek? More pounds per square inch than the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

The thing that nobody mentioned at the time, was that, as we were soaring up, Lake Las Vegas was crashing down. Bust. Skint. Bankrupt. The pilot mentioned Celine Dion. Celebrities and extravagance. I guess that stoney broke doesn’t fit the image.

On we headed, out over Hoover Dam. Despite the totally opaque head of the bimbo getting repeatedly in the way, I still managed to get some usable pictures. The new bridge they are building looks impressive, but at the rate that the water in Lake Meade is dropping, they could have waited and driven over the lake bed in a year or two. It’s gonna get thirsty in Las Vegas soon.

The Grand Canyon is big. It is spectacular and a site to behold. Looking back, I wished that I had driven there to be in the Grand Canyon. The helicopter trip was worth the money, but we came away feeling that watching it all on television would have been very much the same. The Valley of Fire looked much the same – but redder. The pilot waffled the biggest load of nonsense and the bimbo took it all in. Plenty of space to put it all in, I suppose …
The most impressive sight, the most amazing site over the Grand Canyon was this. The reflection of the sun shining on the Luxor Hotel was so bright, the brilliant flare of it could be seen 50 miles away whilst we flew over Arizona.
Keep cleaning those windows, lads. You are doing a grand job.

On the way back, we flew straight along the strip. Lots of great photos of Las Vegas.
And quite a few of the back of a bimbo’s head.
Call me sexist if you like, but this was a woman with barely enough brain to prevent her ears from imploding. She could have sent sex-equality back a hundred years with one simple statement. I hope that the boyfiend likes that sort of thing.

After the trip, the boyfriend gave the pilot a tip. So did we. But not as much as we might have.
Was the trip worth it? Yes.
But no more than that.
Next time, I’ll drive.