Dec 24

Dec 24 Two billion years of water torture

Today was our visit to the Grand Canyon which we were doing via helicopter although it commenced with the tour company sending a limo to the hotel to pick us up. I've never been in a limo solely because I think they're rather crass. This limo did nothing to change that opinion: it was covered in silver foil detail, neon lights inside and smelt like day old party debris. Anyhoo - it was only a 20 minute ride so no lasting damage to my psyche has been done.
A safety briefing and we were on our way with a 20 min travel time to a flyover of the Hoover Dam. Ant and I had seats in the front of the helicopter so there may have been a few gasps during the first 5 or 10 minutes as we got used to the perspective.

Flying over the Hoover Dam was super interesting especially in light of yesterday's visit - we'd had the ground perspective and now we got it from the air. Yet again, you realise what an amazing piece of engineering the dam is.

We then flew cross country up Lake Mead to the Colorado River and crossed over a very rugged landscape indeed. The colours are incredible - lots of reds where there are iron deposits, green terrain where there is copper and white and yellow terrain. Presumably the white and yellow ground are where there are silver and gold deposits but that seems a little simplistic. Apparently all the gold and silver that funded the American Civil War was mined from the mountains in and around the Grand Canyon; ironically a war that Nevada didn't participate in as it wasn't at that point a state. Or even barely inhabited by white settlers.

It was however inhabited by an indigenous population and today the Grand Canyon is a self-governed territory exempt from both federal and state laws or oversight. There were tribes living in the bottom of the canyon and tribes on the fertile upper plains.

The canyon itself is quite literally gobsmacking. Jaw dropping. All the superlatives for stunned that you can find. The scale is overwhelmingly immense and the silence (once the helicopter landed and the blades ceased) is almost oppressive. We landed on flat abutment on the floor of the canyon with cliffs towering above us on either side and you really get a sense of how the canyon has been formed over billions of years with the water scouring away the soft rock - you can almost read the aeons in the horizontal lines. We also got to see our first (and turns out only) cactus - apparently one needs to go deeper into Arizona to see cacti and we were only just over the Arizona border.

Our stop included a little champagne so after doing the obligatory photos and Art Creation, we perched on the side of the river and had bubbles and pretzels.

Flying out of the canyon was rather a different story than coming in - we seemed to vertically ascend the 3500ft in a manner that felt unnessersarily close to the cliffs. I do like being able to see detail but on this occasion I felt like perhaps less would have been better. We stopped for a refuel at top of the canyon on the South Rim where by chance we got to see wild coyote and from there it was a half hour return to Vegas.

You know when you go to a museum and after a couple of hours, your brain can't process any more? That's exactly how we felt by the time we got back to Vegas.

The first white man through the bottom of the canyon, Major John Wesley Powell, set out with 9 men, 4 boats and food for 10 months. 3 of the men got the heebies in the canyon, panicked and, abandoning the group, climbed out of the canyon to continue in safety up the top. They died. The rest of the part reached current day Lake Mead 2 days later.
Even then the Agile methodology of Pivot, Perish or Persevere was tricky to get right.
You're welcome.