The Grand Canyon: You likely only have time to see a small part of this natural wonder since it’s so big. We booked a tour that gave us a little of everything packed in a 10 hour day and it was well worth the price.
We were staying at the beautiful Encore hotel on the Vegas Strip, and wanted a bit of adventure. With that in mind, we found a great, albeit expensive (around $450 per person), full-day tour of the Grand Canyon that included a limo, helicopter, boat, and coach. A lot of different modes of transport packed into one day! The Grand Canyon is, as you must know, absolutely huge. There are parts of it that are relatively close to Las Vegas and in Nevada. However, the tour we booked took us further and into Arizona where the Hualapai Indian Reservation is located.
We were picked up in the morning at the hotel in a nice stretch limousine / SUV hybrid vehicle. That made for a nice comfortable ride since getting to the Grand Canyon was around 3 hours from Vegas. There were some short stops along the way, including one to quickly look at the Hoover Dam. The view wasn’t spectacular where we were stopped, but not going to the visitor center saved us some time.
The route is quite scenic, as you can see from the couple of images above. It took us about 3 hours to get to our destination (there was a bit of traffic), but the scenery kept me from taking a nap. At least for the way there. Once we arrived at the airport with the helipads, we went through a safety briefing.
The helicopter ride was a lot of fun. We got to see a nice bird’s eye view of the Grand Canyon in that area. We initially flew around the canyon for about 10 minutes. It was a one-way trip as the helicopter dropped us off inside the canyon along the Colorado River.
There was a boat waiting for us to take a short ride on the water with a guide. We went around for about 15 minutes on the boat and then made our way back to the drop-off point. The boat ride offered some nice views from inside the canyon. Once back to the drop-off point, another helicopter took us back to the original helipad in about 10 minutes.
The helicopter and boat rides were the most exciting part of the tour. However, the excursion didn’t end there. We took a very short bus ride up the canyon to reach the visitor center which has the Grand Canyon Skywalk. We were there for long enough to appreciate the beautiful view and also see some of the informational native american displays. This was the last part of the excursion before we hoped back in the limo to get back to the hotel. The ride back was several hours, so it was prime time to take a nap and recharge for a night out in Vegas!
In summary, the day trip to the Grand Canyon was great way to add a bit of nature and adventure to our Las Vegas vacation. The limo+helicopter+boat+bus combination provided a lot of variety in our day and we were able to see a lot more than if we had gone there on our own.
Adventures for two 
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