Tusayan, AZ
Simple but you're at the Grand Canyon. Walk to the South Rim from town.
Gateway to the Grand Canyon SFRA. The airport sits at 6,609ft MSL on the Kaibab Plateau. Study the Grand Canyon Special Flight Rules Area chart carefully before arrival — VFR corridors through the canyon are strictly defined.
The most awe-inspiring flyover in American aviation. The SFRA has designated corridors for VFR flight — you can legally fly through the canyon at specific altitudes. The scale is almost impossible to process: the canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and over a mile deep. The Colorado River at the bottom looks like a tiny green thread. The east end near Desert View offers the widest vistas. The SFRA establishes specific corridors for VFR overflight.
The Colorado River makes an almost perfect 270-degree horseshoe meander around a sandstone mesa near Page, AZ. The cliff walls drop 1,000 feet straight down to the emerald-green river. From above, the geometry is almost surreal — a perfect U-shaped canyon with a lone rock pillar in the center. Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam are just 5nm upstream. This area has some of the most dramatic geology visible from any aircraft anywhere.
At Page, the Colorado River disappears behind a 710-foot curve of concrete: Glen Canyon Dam, the second-tallest dam in the country after Hoover, finished in 1966. Behind it the river backs up into Lake Powell, a reservoir 186 miles long with nearly 2,000 miles of shoreline, blue water wound deep into red Navajo sandstone canyons; from the air that contrast is the whole show. The steel-arch Glen Canyon Bridge spans the gorge right beside the dam. The town of Page exists only because the dam did; it started as the construction camp. Watch the waterline against the rock: two decades of drought have pulled Lake Powell far below its old high marks, and the pale bathtub ring on the canyon walls shows how far.
A 50,000-year-old impact crater near Winslow, Arizona. Three-quarters of a mile across and 550 feet deep — the entire Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval would fit inside with room to spare. The rim rises 150ft above the surrounding desert, creating a dramatic shadow ring visible from cruise altitude. NASA trained Apollo astronauts here. The crater is privately owned and well-preserved — it looks almost fresh. Best viewed with low sun angle for shadow definition.