It doesn’t get more epic than the Grand Canyon when choosing a wedding location. All you have to decide is which part of the 1,218,375 acre park you want to visit. Formed as a result of millions of years of erosion, it is 6,000 feet (1828 meters) deep at its deepest point and 15 miles at its widest. How do you get there? Well, you can drive if you have some good tunes and an abundance of time, but if you want to really experience the Grand Canyon you need to do it from the air. Leaving from Las Vegas it’s a 45 minute flight straight east to the eastern rim, and the mouth of the Colorado River.
Typically the heli pilot is chock full of great info about Las Vegas, the Southwest, Lake Mead, and Hoover Dam, and this last trip was no exception, I always learn something new! The Hoover Dam Bypass has made amazing progress and is still on track for completion November 2010. (image above) It’s very interesting to see 2 of man’s most intensive labor projects over the past 80 years, just before flying over nature’s effort of millions. Jim, our pilot, flew special ops missions for 15 years and decided to switch things up. In his words he was a little tired of “getting shot at.”
We landed uncomfortably close on a ledge overlooking the Colorado River with walls around us a mile tall (yeah!), and on cue our officiant make quick work of Craig & Alla’s wedding vows and we went into marathon picture mode for the remaining 25 minutes on the ground. Alla was the ultimate ham, no complaints here, work the camera girl!!! We mounted up, took off, made the mile long climb straight up out of the canyon, and crested the edge of the eastern rim to a beautiful sky (image above).
