Flying over the Grand Canyon

Laughlin to Grand Canyon

I loaded the Zuni and Dragon corridor entry and exit points in our brand new Avidine GPS.  The flight from KIFP to the Grand Canyon was about an hour, and smooth as glass the whole way.  I'm thinking "this is going to be great tour"  Surprise, NOT the case at all once OVER the canyon.  LA Center stayed with us on the entire trip with flight following on 124.85, even into the corridor. Once we turned and entered the Zuni corridor we got rocked all over the place at 11,500 feet,  I couldn't hold a heading or altitude in the corridor, so I bailed out, and headed back to the plateau.    I headed to Valle (40G) airport for a landing as soon as possible to give the family a break from the roller coaster.  (I had also read there is a museum, Flintstones village and hotel there)  Going in this direction we now had some serious headwinds and turbulence. The windsock was all over the place at Valle, and on final I saw the winds reversed, and I had to switch runways.   I could feel the reduced performance of the airplane in the high density altitude when doing a go-around.  The runway at Valle has lousy pavement, (similar to Catalina airport) and I got it down the centerline fighting some heavy crosswinds.

KGCN, Grand Canyon National Park airport

Zuni Point Corridor

KCMR, HA Clark Memorial Field, Williams, AZ, 

our diversion and overnight stop

After landing at Valle to take a break from the bumps,  we departed again and headed south to Sedona for our planned overnight.    After more rocking and rolling once in the air, I decided it would only get worse the further we went, and diverted to Williams.  I knew there were lots of hotels there and it turned out it was a nice place to do an overnight.   It was our lucky day, we caught the only Uber in Williams, to get us to the hotel.   The driver also turned out to be the same lady who took our reservation over the phone at the newly remodeled La Quinta Inn.   We got a ride back to the airport the next morning with a (hotel recommend) taxi called Two Thumbs Up, again...the only taxi in town.  Williams Clark airport has a friendly A&P IA on site called, Performance Air Group, self serve gas (I picked up a few gallons) and a nice new terminal building.   I found out later that the Grand Canyon tour ops were cancelled on this day due to all the winds.  Thanks to Robert for all his training with me, as I used every bit of airmanship learned on this trip.

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