Grand Canyon through the smoke
Arriving in Williams we were surprised to find an IMAX theatre, showing “the world’s most watched IMAX film” which was a 45 presentation of the history of the Grand Canyon. The film covered the history of the Canyon and whetted our appetite for the real thing the next day.
On arriving at Desert View point, with the Watchtower presiding over the actual Grand Canyon it looked a bit less impressive as all the fires in the distance cast a pall of smoke over and into the canyon, and this led to the cancellation of our helicopter flight which we rescheduled for the next day.
Instead we hiked around a bit, watched the sunset and headed into town where we found an arcade and bowling alley. Reigniting the old international rivalries we had another tournament, and whilst I did ok at the air-hockey, the bowling was shameful, only being saved from last place by someone accidentally bowling during my turn and getting a reasonable score, thereby relegating themselves to the bottom of the leader board. Skill!
The next day, with people still sulking about their self inflicted loss we set off on a long hike of the rim of the canyon, before going back to the aerodrome for a 45min helicopter flight. This took us round the far side of the canyon to get a better view of the rivers that shaped it, and even over the still burning forest fires.
