Dune Buggies!

Our original plan was to take a helicopter ride that would drop down into the Grand Canyon. This would give us a chance to see the Grand Canyon and get a feel as to what we were getting ourselves into. We were talking to one of the helicopter ride operators and Connor found a flyer for dune buggy riding. Connor and I talked and he decided he would rather ride a dune buggy than fly a helicopter. With the dune buggy, Connor would get to drive.

A dune buggy instructor would be the lead. A group of dune buggies would follow the instructor through the dunes on a guided tour. There were four dune buggies in our group.

At the start, the instructor took off and the other two dune buggies followed. Connor and I tried to keep up but were not able to. Eventually we were separated from the group and stopped. (You are instructed to do this.) The instructor came back and found us. He asked us to follow him to the rest of the group. We watched as the instructor drove his dune buggy off the side of a dune. He just disappeared. We decided to follow and found ourselves going almost straight down a 50 foot drop! It was like the doing the vertical drop slide at a water park in a dune buggy.

At the halfway point on the ride, Connor got to drive. Connor was excellent. Connor was actually a better dune buggy driver than I was. Connor was very brave and adventurous. We came up on a 10 foot dune and Connor just floored it. The dune buggy popped to the top just fine. It was awesome. It was more fun to be a passenger with Connor driving.

The dune buggy ride also came with a show. You are picked up at your hotel by a shuttle. When we got on the shuttle, we saw everyone else choosing to take this adventure. There were no women. At the back of the shuttle, there were three 20 something year old party animals. One of them was holding an HD video camera and immediately began filming us. The second asked us a lot of questions. The third was passed out in the back. These three people were the other people in our dune buggy group. They were completely out of hand. Every other word they said was the f bomb.

The guy who was passed out woke up at the dune buggy depot and needed a cigarette. There were none to be had. So he went outside, found a worker, and bought a half pack of cigarettes and a lighter from him.

On the trail, the tree guys basically ignored every rule possible. They jumped the dune buggy way into the air, got stuck multiple times, and went off the trail. At one point, one of the guys had taken off his shirt, was wearing flip flops, and was smoking while driving. He then found a stuck dune buggy and started circling it taunting the stuck rider until an instructor showed up.