Who would have thought that the Grand Canyon, northern Arizona, and Las Vegas areas would have so many consecutive days of crappy weather in late August. There re still broken clouds around Las Vegas and forecast for The Grand Canyon, but we wanted to give an overflight of the canyon another go. We set off of an IFR flight plan to Grand Canyon airport wi the hopes of canceling if the weather got better. It didn't, so we didn't. We had to land at Grand Canyon with low overcast. Combined with my landing at Bryce Canyon airport these were the least great of the trip for me. But hey, we got down, and that shortly before the skies opened up.

The Grand Canyon airport is where many of the commercial round trip flights commence and the tour operator runs a nice operation . It'd be a fun company to own & run. The weather was below comfortable takeoff minimums so we made ourselves at home on the Lazy Boys. Johannes was well impressed with these ;-). We also spotted some coyotes on the taxiways and runways, so the ATIS report that forewarned us of this wasn't a joke. Very cool to see.

Once the weather got a bit better we set off for LA. I'd really want to hit up Dallas so was keen to go wherever Johannes wanted to go as our next stop. We eventually left the bad weather system behind as Southern California neared. We decided on Van Nuys airport since that was close to Hollywood and the touristy sights. Johannes nailed the landing. Contrary to the relatively nit-picky service we received from that FBO in Edinborough, here they were amazingly friendly. Upon hearing that we were on an around-the-world flight, Richard, manning the front desk, bent over backwards even more to help us out. We had opera rental car sorted and a hotel with route picked out in no time . He explained that the 18-year-old Cirrus pilot from Australia attempting the youngest around-the-world solo flight had flown into Van Nuys and Signature Aviation when coming from Hawaii. I'm following his blog (teenworldflight.com) and it was fun to see it's a small world after all.

Los Angeles made a surprisingly good impression. Having only been once before I remember'd it as just a massive sprawl. This time it seemed just fine. Our hotel on Sunset Blvd put us close to some of the action and we had a nice walk before and after some good typical bar food at The Happy Ending pub.

Another eventful day, another case of instantly falling asleep.

Routings:
Las Vegas KVGT to Grand Canyon KGCN 1h40m: RT1 departure BLD 080 radial V562 PGS
KGCN to Van Nuys KVNY 2h50m: V210 HEC V12 PMD V386 LYNXX8 UMBER