Grand Canyon

On Saturday Chris and I were able to go on a tour of the Grand Canyon's west rim. Some of our friends (Rick & Mollie Gillespie) have a sister/sister-in-law who works for a company that puts together helicopter/boat tours of the Grand Canyon. Ricks birthday is this week so Mollie's sister comped her four tickets and they invite us to go. It was so super fun! We took a small plane (it only fit 21 people and that included the pilot and co-pilot) to the grand canyon, then we rode a helicopter to the bottom, rode a boat down the Colorado river, then took the helicopter back to the top. There were ten people to be divided up into two helicopters, so Chris and I weren't able to ride down together. The plus side of that is Chris was able to ride in the front of the helicopter so he had excellent views. The down side was at the top the guide told us we would all meet up at the bottom and be on the same boat. Someone failed to mention that to the boat driver, and he kept trying to convince Chris in his heavily Japanese accented English that he needed to leave without the passengers of the other helicopter. Chris won out and they waited for us. It was a short boat ride, but the guide was pretty funny even if I could only understand about half of what he said.

This is the plane, helicopter and boat that we rode on.

Chris thought this was a cool sign.

When we got back to the top we took a bus to a couple of points on the west rim. It was the 20th anniversary of the opening of the west rim so there was cake everywhere we went. The first place we went called Eagle Point, had a sky walk which is a walkway made of glass that goes about twenty or thirty feet over the edge of the canyon. It cost $26.00 a person and you couldn't even take your own pictures so we passed on that one. We went to a spot called Guano Point to have a buffet style lunch and it was pretty tasty. The wind was getting pretty strong and it was getting colder so all of the people with jewelry booths were packing up to leave by the time we got there. The weather had been pretty good up to that point so I guess we were lucky that we were on our way back.

Our friends Rick and Mollie and a fantastic view.

Tipi's

Mmmmm, Guano!

An aerial view of Hoover Dam

Chris' sister Megan was nice enough to watch our kids for us, and she took them to a Leonardo DaVinci exhibit that has been here in town for the last month. Ashton and Aiden liked it well enough, but Megan thought Kaylee would have liked it even better if she had gotten to spend a little more time exploring, rather than keeping up with her brothers and sister. Even Dalin found something he liked so it was a good day for them too.

Saturday was our date night as well, so Megan dropped our kids off at my brother's house and Chris and I were able to have a few more kid free hours. I felt a little guilty because our kids hadn't seen us all day, but I got over it pretty quickly. There was a Jazz basketball game on so Chris watched that and I took a nap. It was great, I would enjoy more dates like that.