Day 3 - Flying the Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon, and landing in Vegas...

Sue and I are up early to fly the Grand Canyon. It's a beautiful, severe clear blue sky around 0600...way early for me to be up and about. Smooth air, smooth ride. Gorgeous scenery to watch below and all around us.

No words can capture these scenes for me. You just have to sit back and enjoy. Wonder at how all this came to be. Savor the ability to soar above and around all of this and soak it in. This experience really makes me appreciate what a gift flying can be.

The special flight rules for this area divide the Canyon into 4 No Fly zones with corridors in between each No Fly zone where aircraft can criss cross the Canyon.  So we flew north at 11,500 ft up the furthest east corridor and entered Marble Canyon, traveling further north to Page AZ and Lake Powell. We made a fuel stop in Page and then headed back down to the Grand Canyon.

Sue has a great sense of flying terrain and reading the VFR maps. She picks out all kinds of landmarks way better than me and nails Corridor #4 - Fossil Corridor. We're flying at 10,500 ft heading back south and then out of the Canyon. It's a little sad to leave it all behind, as we only covered a small piece of this treasure. Definitely more territory to cover another day, another trip maybe. But we do need to move on. The Air Race Classic is calling, and we do have lots more ground to cover...

We head for Las Vegas with a plan to land at North Las Vegas Airport for fuel and lunch. It promises to be VERY hot there, so we don't want to spend too much time on the ground...get in, get out...before things heat up to much...

Not so fast though...sigh...we manage to catch a quick lunch at a fast food joint. It's 100+ degrees, and it's killing us. Upon start up, the plane doesn't sound quite right, and Sue shuts it down. We head to an FBO maintenance shop on the field to check it out. Good call. It looks like a blown exhaust to the mechanic, and we check into a hotel for the night.

Sue heads off to check out the casino, and I head off to a Quick Care place to deal with an annoying case of poison ivy. Four hours later, the good news is that the exhaust gasket is an "easy" fix and the bad news is that I'm loaded up with drugs to deal with the poison ivy. We'll be out of here in the morning though...