Are you looking for a fun way to spend your Thanksgiving holiday? Getting a mini-vacation is nice, so don’t waste it laying around the house watching football and eating turkey. A more exciting option is to take a quick trip to Arizona or Las Vegas and take an air tour of the Grand Canyon while you’re there. These tours are very popular, so book your seats as soon as you can before they sell out.
Tusayan Air Tours
A lot of people automatically think of the West Rim when thinking about the Grand Canyon. It’s true the West Rim is a popular tourist destination, but the South Rim is known for its outstanding beauty, so it is worth touring too.
You get to choose from two different helicopter tours of the South Rim. The first tour gives you 30 minutes of flight time and covers the land between the North and South Rims, and the other tour is a longer, 50-minute flight that covers the same ground as the 30-minute tour, but also includes a flight over to the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon National Park. You only have to pay a little more to upgrade to the longer tour, and it’s worth it since you’ll see about 75 percent of the park. Plus, the longer tour is very enjoyable because of the natural beauty in that part of the canyon.
If you want to add a little more excitement to your South Rim tour, you can book a Jeep tour through the park. An air tour of the canyon followed by a Jeep tour that lets you see the sights up close is the ultimate way to tour the South Rim.
Vegas Air Tours
There are a lot more tours that originate in Vegas because it’s the entertainment capitol of the world and a destination for so many travelers.
The Vegas tours lift off from Boulder City or from the Strip in Vegas. While the tours all follow the same flight route on the way to the canyon, if you take a deluxe tour that lifts off from the Vegas Strip, you get to see the city from the air too. Another good thing about booking a deluxe tour is that you get to fly on an EcoStar chopper. The EcoStar is nice because it has more cabin room and has unobstructed views of the sights below, plus it is a lot quieter in the cabin. The deluxe tours even come with limo transportation to and from your hotel, so the extra expense to book one of these tours is worth it.
One of the reasons the West Rim is such a popular destination is because helicopters are allowed to land there. Air-only tours are available too, and these fly over the Grand Canyon and head back to Vegas without landing, plus you get an aerial view of the Hoover Dam along the way. Landing tours offer the same aerial sights as the air-only tours but since they land at the canyon, you get to have some additional fun.
There’s one landing tour that descends into the canyon and lands on the bottom. The tour comes with a champagne picnic and you can upgrade it to include a boat ride on the Colorado River. There is also a tour that lands on top of the rim and you can upgrade it to include tickets to the amazing Skywalk. The Skywalk is a unique glass structure that is suspended over the canyon so you can stand 4000 feet above the canyon floor on a plate of glass. It’s an exhilarating experience if you are brave enough to try it. It’s even possible to experience the top of the rim and the canyon floor in a single day when you combine the landing tours.
Airplane Tours Are Available Too
Airplanes make these tours too by following the same flight path as the choppers, and you can take a plane tour of the West Rim or the South Rim. An airplane tour may be the best option if you’re traveling with a group because a plane can carry 19 people at a time. The airplanes used on these tours have to fly at a higher altitude than the helicopters do, but an advantage is that the plane tours are less expensive. The planes have large windows, so you’ll still have a fantastic view, plus planes are more comfortable for flying, so if you need to watch your budget, booking an airplane tour is a great option to consider.
Book Tours Online For Thanksgiving Adventures
Because these tours of the Grand Canyon are popular, they fill up fast. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting the tour you want as long as you book it early. Try to book it about two weeks ahead of time, so you have the best selection of tours. Also, book your tour online so you get the low Internet rate, and when you buy online with your credit card, you get instant confirmation of your reservation.