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| - Yesterday we took a tour to the Grand Canyon with Las Vegas Grand Canyon Tour.
The tour we booked was Grand Canyon South Rim Deluxe Air & Ground.
We got on a shuttle at Circus Circus at 10:20 am then one pickup at the LVR and then on our way to the North Las Vegas Airport. We arrived at the airport, around 11am checked in. We were weighed and assigned seats. We then had to wait for our plane which was at 11:45. We were allowed to pick a boxed lunch which the choices were - ham, turkey, roast beef and then a veggie wrap. The box lunches were ok - inside each box was the sandwich or wrap, bag of chips, small bottle of water, apple and then a prepackaged pastry cake - I had carrot bread and the hubby had coffee cake. I can review the veggie wrap and honestly it was terrible - contents were lettuce, sun dried tomatoes and then cucumbers - all wrapped in a flour tortilla. This really wasn't that big of a deal though - I didn't book the tour for lunch. lol.
The plane only had about 20 seats. Every seat was next to a window with a aisle down the side. There were headphones for you to put on that did have music and then tourist information during the flight. It was a little confusing what channel you needed to be on for hear your language - so I did end up missing a lot of the narration for the 1st 20 minutes of the flight.
The flight is really pretty. You fly paste the hoover dam. If you are sitting on the left side of the plane you will see it - the right side is out of luck because you only fly close to it on the way there. They fly a little different route back.
The rest of the scenery is just beautiful. All these shades of of rock and then you see a ton of the canyon from the air. It was only about a 45 minute and then you land at the Grand Canyon Airport.
Next is the boarding of the shuttle bus to go inside the Grand Canyon National Park. Our bus driver was Todd and he was pretty funny. He really told you a lot of history about the place and I learned a lot of cool things. Like:
It costs 25 bucks a car to get into the park
it costs 12 for hikers or walkers
They have 3 different fir type trees in the park
Reservations for lodging inside the canyon can be up to a year wait
To take a donkey down a trail to the bottom of the canyon is a two year wait.
Over half the lodging accommodations do not have any air-conditioning in them
Our first stop was Bright Angel Point. You get 1 hour to walk to check it out. Here you'll see the circa 1935 Bright Angel Lodge. This is a good stop if you want to purchase souvenirs. They did have places to get food and drinks and then you of course are outside looking at the grand canyon which is at this point 277 miles long and 18 miles wide and 1 mile deep.
Our next stop was called Mather Point, named for the National Park Service first Director, Stephen Mather. This unobstructed, awe-inspiring point on the South Rim offers that "perfect view" of the Canyon featured in the countless books and movies. Again we got 1 hour to hang out here as well. Then we boarded the bus and were shuttled back to the airport. We walked in - boarded the plane and were off and on our way back to Vegas.
Just as a reminder make sure as you are riding along inside the park keep an eye out into the woods. I saw a ton of deer and I did get to see some elk too but they can easily be missed.
The flight back was great. The sun was setting and if you were sitting on the left you could get some really great pictures of the sunset. The right side is all canyon which is great too :)
Overall it was a great trip the good includes:
The customer service of those we interacted with was fantastic
Vision air is the airline that flew us and they were very professional and thorough. We were asked multiple times to show our ids - to confirm that we were in fact who we said we were. We had to do this upon check in and then prior to boarding the plane there and back.
The trip is just a really great way to quickly see the canyon
It is even more pretty in person than it is on tv, just breathtaking.
Only cons would (which is no fault of the tour) It was incredibly quick. I wish I could have had two hours at each viewpoint - because there was some really great hiking and such but 1 hour is not much time.
It was incredibly crowded, again this isn't the fault of the tour. There were large lookout spots right off the tour buses but if you avoided those and just walked along the rim trail there were plenty of more intimate spots to get pictures. Not sure much can be done about the crowds.
It was a little cool. it was about 40 degrees so, hats, mittens and heavier coats were in store for sure. They had snow on the ground at the top of the canyon which they said had been there for about two weeks.
All in all a great time and more people should write reviews for this tour company because they did a really great job.
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