The Voyage Home (Grand Canyon part 5)

After the nice picnic at the edge of the world it was time to fly home. Here's another shot of the picnic site Guano Point:

Here's a view of the Skywalk from the air:


Of all the aerial pictures we took this captures the scale the best due to the shadowing of the afternoon

Speaking of the afternoon, the ride was a _lot_ bumpier coming back due to the ground heating up. Hot ground causes thermals or updrafts to form, which means you can be cruising along and a gust of air from below will push your plane up; once it subsides the plane then comes down. Combine that with the wind blowing sideways and you get a nice bouncy ride.

We still managed to take lots of pictures despite the washing machine effect.


As frequently happens there was a lot of traffic on the commute home...



Everyone on our plane had headsets so we could talk to each other. We could also listen in to air traffic control channels. Since the neither airport had a tower it was up to the planes to talk to each other to communicate locations and sequence landings and so forth. Since that channel was empty for most of the way the other pilots had some pretty funny conversations about who got the biggest updraft, whose plane was faster, etc. It felt like a chatroom at 10,000 feet and was very entertaining.

It's worth noting that altitude is expressed above sea level, but ground level here was anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 feet, so we were flying a few thousand feet above ground.

Here's our hotel in Sedona at the lower left. It was stunning (and ensured no cell reception).


This is one of the signature rock formations of Sedona and looks like the ruins of a massive fortress from afar. It's close to the airport.


And here's a final shot of the USS Sedona from our final approach. You can just make out the arrestor wires...


Truly a spectacular trip.