21:00 Pacific, though I thought it was Mountain. Still sounding.famously.worm
Obligatory West Wing quotation:
Sorkin knows his onions. As did whomever he was quoting. Bucket list stuff before they invented buckets.
After failing my attempt #3 to fix my comms problem I threw my hands in the air and went out to the airfield and Papillon for their helicopter tour of South Rim, followed by Buck Wild’s hummer tour.
To be irredeemably snitty, you do spend about as long flying to and back as you do within the canyon itself. But when you have something which is simply that awesome to show you can forgive them. You don’t really fly into the canyon so much as one second you are 150m above the perimeter, the next you are most of a mile above the base.
You do wonder the reaction of the first group of wagon driving settlers who were heading for their dream of California and then blundered upon this obstruction to their westward progress. Likely wasn’t found in the Gospels.
Barely fathomably massive. Width, length, depth. Depth, and width. Mucks ups your own perception of space. Totally rodgered the perspective of my camera’s auto focus.
Where did all that dirt go, I ask.
To make the delta of a river which now doesn’t reach the sea, I’m told.
To me it’s not so much the scale, which is Brogdinalian, but the timeframe … because without those eons you don’t get the scale. The upper strata @270million BP and predates the Age of Dinosaurs, so no fossil hunting here. The lower strata @ 1.6 billion BP predating the breakup of Pangea.
What created it? DUDE is the pneumonic for the construction of the Grand Canyon. Deposition. Uplift. Down Cutting. Erosion. Though to be technically correct I think the 2nd D is a furphy.
According to our pilot, numbers flying took a real hammering after COVID and are still down 70%. And of the passengers only about 10% are USAers. There were Italians, Swiss and French amongst the 8 passengers plus self and zero locals.
The Hummer trip above the rim was of equal standard without the wizz-bang technical stuff. I think it would be better in adjunct to combine with a trip down at the base. I had originally planned to go rafting but that didn’t fit into Plan C. Disappointing. Still on the bucket list.
The only problem with Buck Wild segment was that half the small group were a family of 5 from NTC. The 5yo and the 7yo, from the back seat, attempted to talk over the undampened racket of the Hummer, without drawing breath, for 3 hours. You can never find an AK47 when it’s needed.
Tomorrow is on to Kayenta (I buggered up Tusayan in last post) with a sunset tour of Monument Valley.