Its been a number of years but another unforgettable Vegas experience was taking a helicopter to the Grand Canyon. It can be pricey, but was well worth it. You get up in the early morning and a shuttle picks you up from your Vegas strip hotel. They drive you to the helicopter airport where you get a short safety instruction, and with some light refreshments served. Within the hour you, and 30 or so others assigned to helicopters already running on landing pads outside (2-5 passengers to a helicopter). You seatbeat in and all eight helicopters take off almost simultaneously. The ground drops away, and your visual points of reference are the skyline and the other seven helicopters flying in formation with you!

Over the next 30 to 45 minutes (from memory) you’re treated to gorgeous views of the desert from above, lake (Powell?), and even see Hoover damn from above. You’re wearing headsets so you can converse with other passengers and the pilot. Eventually you see the edge of the Grand Canyon in the distance in front of you first small, but then large as it looms into view.

After flying over the outskirts, you suddenly see the lead helicopter veers sharply left and down into a canyon. The four other helicopters in front of you do the same as you stretch out in a line. Then its your helicopter’s turn. Your helicopter banks hard and the red rocks of the canyon fill your full front view as you dive down. You glance back to see sky and the trailing helicopters dive down behind you. You look out the side windows and see nothing but canyon wall. In front, the tail rotor of the helicopter you’re following a few hundred meters in front of you. The helicopter engine whines higher as the pilot shoves the throttle forward. You feel yourself pushed back in the seat as you race through the winding canyon like the goddamn star wars trench run!

Winding back and forth through the deep canyon the walls rising far above you, you can’t decide where to look! You see your fellow passengers with huge smiles on their faces and realize you’re wearing one yourself. You can’t help it! This goes on for 7 or 8 minutes as you see rock formations unseeable except by aircraft. No roads. No paths. The the river’s white water you’re chasing as you rush through the canyon.

The helicopter slow as the canyon opens wide. You’re hovering and finally able to take in everything you see at once. In the far FAR distance your pilot points out the Grand Canyon Skywalk and realize how silly it would be to try to take in the canyon from there. The helicopter pitches right, and after a couple more minutes you see your leading helicopters landing one after another on pads at the bottom of the canyon! Yours does the same and when you exit, the sounds of nature fills the air after the last helicopter lands and its engine shuts off. A sound of the river rushing nearby, the wind whipping through the twisted rocks.

Its then you have your lunch! There’s a small covered outbuilding with picnic tables and your pilot has brought two picnic baskets from your helicopter. You have light sandwiches and champagne as you take in the beautiful vista. Lunch finished, you walk around a bit and stare deeply at the river and in 30 min you’re back on your helicopter lifting off one after another for your flight home.

Its been a long day and the sun is sitting lower in the sky now. You touch down at the airport and are shuttled back to your strip hotel. You have a memory you take with you forever.

I think this was $300 per person about 10 years go.