What an absolutely great day!
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| Hermit's Rest Trail |
When researching this trip I came across the suggestion to do the Hermit’s Rest Trail walk early in the morning. It’s an 11 km trail which you can walk or there’s a shuttle bus which stops at all the lookouts and points of interest. Alternatively you can combine the two, which is what we did. We probably walked about 5 km so the exercise was good. The scenery was stunning with the various colours in the cliffs really standing out in the early morning light.
We had hoped to visit some of the lookouts to the east but ran out of time so will have a look at them on the way out to Flagstaff on Tuesday.
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| Grand Canyon from the air. |
As we were booked in for a helicopter ride over the canyon departing from Tusayan airport (about 6 km south) at 4.00 pm we decided to head there after lunch and see the IMAX Grand Canyon film and check out the National Geographic Visitors’ Centre. It was a typical IMAX film – zooming over cliff tops, banking around corners etc, but was really enjoyable although it concentrated more on the human aspects of the canyon rather than the natural history which we would have found more interesting. Riding the rapids on the Colorado River was awesome but never ever going to be on our list of wishful things to do.
The helicopter flight was absolutely unbelievable – words could never do it justice. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I’d booked on the internet so got a good price but had also requested an upgrade to the front seats if it was available. At $50 each EXTRA it made the flight very expensive but worth every cent.
Seeing the canyon from the rim was great but nothing compares with seeing it from the air. It provides a whole different dimension to the experience. We saw parts of the canyon you could never see any other way. As for the Imax movie zooming over the rim, it had nothing on the real thing. Altogether we had 45 mins in the air, flew over the North Rim, followed the Colorado River upstream to its junction with the Little Colorado, had a magnificent view over the surrounding countryside and much, much more. We took dozens of photos because everywhere you looked there was another majestic vista waiting to be captured.
In 5 or 6 days time when we reach Moab we’ll see more of the Colorado River and its upper reaches. It just amazing the see what this one river was able to create.
