Grand Canyon/Vegas/Southern Utah

[kris_adams]

Hi Everyone,

My 10 year old son and I will be flying out west for 10 days or so next month.  We'll be starting in Atlanta and will make our first stop Gaston's in Arkansas.  We may camp a few nights as he is very excited about that...me, not so much!

Any suggested airports for seeing the Grand Canyon/Las Vegas/Utah?  Vegas is mainly to see the Pawn Stars store--son is really wanting to go there.  Want to see the Staircase in S. Utah.  I'm open to renting cars to see sites as well.

Suggestions are appreciated.  Especially any sites that we shouldn't miss or any lessons learned by others on similar trips.

Thanks,

Kris

 

[carqwik]

If the flight is mostly for your son, I suggest the following:

1) Page, AZ (KPGA): Watch Planet of the Apes (original with Charles Heston) with him and pay particular attention to the opening sequence.  The lake the spaceship crashes is Lake Powell.  Very cool to see from the air.  Also, if you land there, go visit the Glen Canyon Dam.  It is five minutes from the airport, has a visitor center, and is much less crowded than the Hoover Dam.  (Btw, I think it is only 16 feet shorter than Hoover Dam too.)

2) Flagstaff or Winslow: Get a rental car and see Meteor Crater.  The neat thing is that you can fly over it from the air and then see it from the ground.  It's a good way to teach how kinetic energy translates into a huge blast...

3) Grand Canyon: Interesting to fly over through the VFR corridors.  Do this very early in the morning if possible as the colors really show.  Midday, it is very monochromatic.  KGCN is the closest airport to the South Rim visitor area...make sure you have prearranged transportation from the airport to the rim though.

4) Bryce Canyon: Neat to see from the air and the airport is close to the small town and park entrance.  Get arrangements in advance though during the summer.

5) Las Vegas:  Go to HND.  Rental cars onsite and very easy to get to the Strip or anywhere else along a freeway.  Vegas ATC is accommodating usually and the fBO is relatively new and caters equally well to piston and jet drivers.

Above all, if you're coming in teh summmer, do all your flying early in the day.  It gets very hot and very bumpy past 10AM usually, and monsoon season is starting.  This means late afternoon and evening t-storms which are not navigable in a piston of any kind.

[kris_adams]

Great ideas Ken.  I really appreciate them!

[1964-M20E]

I envy you my son is 16 and not very interested in flying with me.  I got the plane a little too late I guess. We did do a couple one day  fun flights.  Enjoy you time with you son, be safe and most of all have fun.  I'd love to take a couple of weeks and fly around camping out and or hotels along the way.  I'll put that on the bucket list.  Oh yea it already is on the list.  I just need to convince my wife to go or maybe my girlfriend :-))

[carqwik]

One more idea...if you like trains, then stop in Winslow (KINW) and visit the La Posada hotel.  It is a former Harvey Hotel that was set up for the Santa Fe RR way long ago.  The restaurant has a good menu and the dinner selections are outstanding, mostly locally or regionally grown stuff (including the meat).  The hotel rooms are "rustic" at best but the coolest part is that the BNSF main East-West line runs right in front of the hotel...and I mean right in front.  There is a patio there where you can relax and watch trains.  Being that it is summer, it probably will be too hot past 10AM or so to sit outside.  The Amtrak train also stops here twice a day.

[kerry]

Temple Bar (U30) is a marina on lake mead.  The runway is right on the lake.  It has the best scenery of the lake.  They have lodging and i believe thet rent boats and jet ski's.  Temple Bar is on your way to Vegas from Grand Canyon.  It might be worth checking out.  I've always wanted to check out pawn stars.  I'm a big fan.  I hear it's quite a wait in line to get into the store.  I recently went to Rick's Restorations and I ended up buying a customized golf cart.

[231Pilot]

Try to all your take offs in the AM, the DA gets really high in the summer, and climb performance in a normally aspirated plane will be somewhat anemic in the afternoons.  Also, the air over the mountains gets a little bumpy in the afternoons.  I try to fly in the mornings if possible.

Have fun!  Be sure you have supplemental O2.

[OR75]

KGCN has a bus service from the airport that will take you all the way inside the park and to the canyon rim.

You need to pay in the souvenir shop inside the terminal. Basically you just buy the NPS entry fee.

It a good walk from the visitor parking ramp (near the tower) to the terminal (no shuttle). But the bus service from the terminal is very good and is part the network of shuttles that services the park.

KGCN has a long / wide runway but watch for the high density and sometimes very very strong gusty winds. The runway is long and wide but tough to see until you get very close (very flat area and very high tall pine trees)

Don't bother with Grand Canyon West (1G4), unless you want to take a tour bus. It is on tribe land and you are pretty much stuck inside the tiny airport. 

KPGA may be a less windy and has 2 runways. Use that if you want to rent a car and go to north rim. It is nearer Lake Powell.

If you want to fly over the canyon, make sure you enter the entry and exit waypoints  in a GPS (they are not in a Jeppesen database). Beautiful if you have faith in your engine.

Whatevr route and stop you choose, fly safe !

 

[WardHolbrook]

I used to fly airtours to and from GCN out of LAS and the company that I work for has a couple of ranches in the Bryce Canyon area so I know the area well. Those places are certainly worth visiting. (Back in my GCN flying days the company had a Mooney M20C that we called the Penalty Box. The boss would assign you to it if he got ticked off at you for any reason. I spent my share of time flying it.) My only comments would be to watch your density altitude - GCN is high enough to begin with and gets really interesting when the temperatures climb up into the 80's and 90's. Flying early in the morning and in the evening while things are cool(er) is the order of the day. Flatlanders need to remember that you still fly the same indicated airspeeds for takeoff and landing, but the True Ground Speeds will be disconcertinly higher - around 20% or so. Don't let the optics of it screw you up. Also, be aware of the airpace restrictions around the national parks. Back in the day, we used to fly down below the rim of the canyon, you can't do that any more. Finally, check for hotel reservations - it can be a problem this time of the year. It's pretty much impossible to get a room at Bryce Canyon now. When we go we end up driving to Cedar City Utah and staying there. The scenic route is worth it though - very beautiful country. Have a safe trip.

[Joe Zuffoletto]

Gaston's might surprise you if you've never been before. I took my son there when he was 8 and we both had an awesome time, except for the day I got chiggers.

[Immelman]

Kris,

I just read you (your kid) may want to camp and saw Ward's comment about BCE hotels.. when my wife and I visited Bryce we found a great place to camp that we drove to in our rental car, a bit north of town. We asked around for suggestions on good places to camp for the night and followed one which worked out great. This is on national forest land, camp as you wish (I am not a big 'campground' person.. would rather just sleep out on my own where its quiet). Here's where we put down for the night. Zoom out and you'll see the roads showing how we got there.

https://maps.google.com/?ll=37.733848,-111.956327&spn=0.010352,0.01442&t=h&z=16

Though it was a bit of a drive we also visited Zion park... amazing. A wet hike up the river canyon into the 'narrows' on a hot day was a lot of fun, and comfortable.

I dare say that the canyon of Zion park is more amazing to behold -- when you're down in the bottom -- than the grand canyon. The Grand Canyon is probably best appreciated from the air. Get the grand canyon chart and do a couple of overflights. That's one you won't forget.

[kris_adams]

Thanks for the tips everyone.  We are planning to head out on 7/11 give or take a day.   We are quite excited to go and plan to hit as many of these points as possible.  I greatly appreciate the ideas!

[moodychief]

Be extremely careful going into Gaston's.  One way in and one way out.  They have a lot of accidents there.  Watch for the dip about half way down the runway.  I was on vacation on the white river a couple of weeks ago and they had a Lake Renegade lose control and crashed while landing on the runway. Took off a fourth of the left wing and bent the right wingtip up.  Also, watch for density altitude as you are in a valley and have a certain corridor to follow.  Three or four years ago, a Lance crashed on takeoff (June or July) and killed several people.