death valley (furnace creek)
elevation 200 ft below sea level.

Tony Cox wrote:

"Al Gilson" wrote in message
...
We're going to spend a few days in Las Vegas and have reserved a C-172 for
a few hours for some aerial sightseeing. After we get checked out to fly
by the FBO, any suggestions on what/where we should go? Any ideas, tips,
suggestions, concerns? We are thinking about flying over Hoover Dam and
maybe over to the Grand Canyon. We have the Las Vegas sectional and
Terminal chart plus the Grand Canyon chart.

Thanks.


Depends on how much time you have.

There are many interesting spots with good restaurants.
Try Temple bar (1 mile walk, but they'll pick you up) or
Echo Bay (better restaurant, but longer & sometimes they
don't come out and it's a 5 mile walk). You can do either
in about an hour round trip flying time from (presumably) VGT.

Grand Canyon West has an interesting approach, but just
a snack bar. They have a brunch thing down in the canyon,
but it is $30 or so per person. That's about 1 1/2 hours
there and back in a 172. You can fly over the lower
part of the grand canyon for a while, but it isn't as impressive
as further up. But you can be lower here...

To the north is Mesquite; to the south Laughlin. Both are good
spots for brunch with casino-type fare. To the west is death
valley. Bit longer, but all doable within 2 hours. For all these
trips, expect to spend about 20 minutes waiting to get out
of VGT. It's pretty busy on the weekends.

General concerns. It's all pretty remote. File a flight plan and
carry something warm in case you have to put down. Not too
many boats out on Lake Mead at this time of year. Lake Mead
has a traffic advisory frequency, 120.65, which you should
monitor and self-announce on. There's a lot of traffic into
and out of the canyon; all sorts of altitudes, but mainly heading
east-west.