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A few months ago I asked my wife what she wanted for her 50th birthday present.

"I want to go to the Grand Canyon Skywalk (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canyon_Skywalk) and lie down on my back and have my photo taken hovering over the Grand Canyon."
OK. Clear enough. I was just a question of making it happen.
(I did think it a bit strange as she is afraid of heights. So, I did confirm she did really want it and she did.)

Friday night we flew from Boston to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a city I've never really wanted to visit. There isn't anything here that attracts me. But, it is the closest major city to the Skywalk and has tours there at a not too, too, too high price.

The wind in the US usually comes from the west, so going to Las Vegas from Boston usually takes longer than going back.
But, the woman flying the jet Friday night had the pedal to the metal and we got here almost an hour and a half early. (I hope she's the one flying us home tonight too...)
So, we were able to get our rental car, get to the hotel, check in and be in our room before we were scheduled to land.

The hotel is The Luxor, the one that looks like a giant pyramid and has a whole Egyptian theme. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_Hotel )
They did not have the room I booked. I had the choice of the king sized bed I booked in a smoking room or a two queen bed room that was non-smoking and up in the tower.
As my wife and I are both allergic to smoke, we're up in the tower.

We unpacked our one small carry on bag and got to bed before midnight.
We woke up at 4 in the morning to get ready.

At 5, the tour company met us under the sphinx and we got in the bus. They drove us off through the lights of Las Vegas, into the dark that surrounds it.
Finally after almost an hour, we came to an airport building about the size of our apartment. That was where they air tours leave from. (Boulder City NV)

They have scales mounted into the floor as you check in, and determined as I stood there that I needed the "comfort seat" to fly. So, I paid the extra money and got two boarding passes so I could have two seats.

They did warn us that my family's curse that we bring rain wherever we go was in full effect.
"We've had a lot of rain overnight," the woman checking us in told me. "So, we can not guarantee you will be able to do everything booked on your tour. If not, we will refund anything you can't do."
"I didn't think it normally rained here this time of year," I said.
"It doesn't," she said. "But, today it will."
Yep. That's the way it works for us.
I had checked the weather forecast Friday afternoon and it had said "mostly sunny all day".
15 hours later, when we were standing there, it was "Rain with a few breaks in the clouds getting worse as the day goes on."

As we waited for the plane, the sun began to come up. It was a beautiful color sky that I'm very sure was not captured by my camera shooting through the glass of the terminal window. A very interesting shade of blue that you just don't see in the sky at home.

We got on the ver small plane and I was glad of my two seats. Not because I am fat, but because they were so close together my knees were well into the seat in front of me and I could use the space to turn sideways.

It was an amazing flight over to the reservation where the Skywalk has been built. We took off just a few minutes before the sun crossed the horizon with low clouds clinging to the mountains. We flew over Hover Dam, and up over the cliffs to the small runway near the edge of the canyon.

When we landed a crow came and perched on the fence next to us and called a greeting. I've always been very fond of crows and was very happy this one greeted us.

There are three things to see at the reservation. A "Western' Village", the Skywalk and Guano Point where you can get lunch. (Yeah, the guano lunch thing made me pause too...)
The tour gives you four hours on the ground there to split as you want between them and has shuttle busses running back and forth every 10 minutes.

All 10 of us from the morning flight piled onto a bus and were taken off to the Western Village. The whole way the bus driver told us how fun the village was, how you could be taught the old west fast draw, how to rope a cow, talk with cowboys, etc.
Zero people got off the bus there.

She seemed sad about that, but drove on to the Skywalk. The whole way there she told us how we could go back to the village if we wanted, even though the busses run the other way.

We got to the skywalk and 100% of the people got off.

The good news was the skywalk was open. The only problem was that as they had rain for the first time in 3 months and it had been quite unexpected, they had to go squeegee it off.

As we went out onto it the sun came out and the clouds moved off some. Not everyone went out on it all at once as you could look around the edge of the canyon there and there was a shop and things.
So there were maybe 8 of us out there at a time. (They let 100 out at a time normally, but this is their low season.)

It is quite a view. The Skywalk is 800 feet/240 meters up from the ground, and that ground is on a side canyon so no where near the bottom.
There is an inner and outer band of metal with glass between them.

My wife had no problem walking out there and looking down through the glass. I must admit that I stuck to one of the bands as much as possible. And, when I had to pass over the glass in between I did so quickly.
I kept reciting the equations for bending beams under cantilever load as I did so.

It is good my wife has faith in engineers as she is married to one. Maybe it says something about them that I worried more than she did.

There was one young woman from India (as opposed to the American Indians who run the place) who also had some worries. At one point she got a bit stuck crossing the glass opening and ask my wife and I to hold her hand as she did so.

Then we waited to get our photos taken.
You are not allowed to bring your own cameras out there. The official reason is they are afraid they will be dropped over the side. But, the fact they have professional photographers that you have to pay for photos is also a big factor.

We waited while they took the photos for the family from Sydney. Then, the couple from Madrid.
Finally we went and my wife got to have the photo she wanted for her birthday. She lay on her back on the glass and the photographer took the photo of her there over the Grand Canyon.

Yay!

Then we went to the shop, bought our photos on USB stick, had lunch at Guano Point, looked around there, stopped the woman from India from backing off the cliff while looking through her viewfinder, took the bus back to the airport, shopped at another shop, heard tales of bugs and snakes in your sleeping bag while camping, flew back to Bolder NV, took a van back to the hotel, and got arrived here at noon, 7 hours after we left.

Photos later. It is a lot of work to upload them on the iPad and we'll be home tomorrow.

The good news is my wife got to do just what she wanted for her birthday. Two weeks early too...