Takeoff from McCarran was pretty simple, go up, turn right and get out of their airspace :)
This allowed for some nice lower altitude pictures though :)

This airliner had to hold for me to take off. I got out as quickly as I could :)

overall view of full flight

overall view of Las Vegas to Grand Canyon

Las Vegas McCarran takeoff (blue) and landing (red)

Other shot from the strip showing the first overfly on the way to GCN in pink

interesting staircase effect (I wasn't flying that way :-D)

Grand Canyon Airport and South Rim

A quick loop around Grand Canyon West and the Skywalk

Hoover Dam with newly constructed bridge

Here is the gps track and Google Earth kml track.

We got out just in time, and landed at McCarran with sunset. The approach in McCarran was a piece of cake except for the part where I couldn't see Vegas or the runway for the longest time because the sunset was blinding me. I was vectored to the Stratosphere above 3500ft, and then right turn straight in to 19R, and right turn right into Atlantic Aviation. It couldn't have gotten any easier.

The views on that flight were really nice with the sun setting, although it was a bit harder to take nice pictures without an SLR camera.

follow me van from Atlantic Aviation

Landing on runway 19R with taxi to Atlantic Aviation

You can see this page to read about the trip to Vegas and the backpacking to the bottom of Grand Canyon.

I was able to rent a very nice turbo SR22, which gave us more options to cross the Sierras at high altitude if need be, de-icing just in case, and a chute in case things really went wrong (not that I would plan for that, but it doesn't hurt to have).

Thankfully the weather was actually perfect that day, which was far from being a given over thanksgiving.

The Sierras were already quite nice and snowy:

almost crossed to hwy 395

Bishop Pass trail to John Muir Trail?

The flight is in pink

Eventually we made it to Vegas:

Vegas Suburbs, including a new one being built

McCarran Airport

Then, I went for the Hoover Dam:

the new bridge is completed

Google Earth already added the new bypass bridge

And finally I had a GPS plotted route through the Grand Canyon (which is actually fairly tricky since it's filled with no fly zones if you're below 14,500ft).

The flight is in pink

Grand Canyon West with the Grand Canyon Skywalk

Skywalk

Flight over The Skywalk

I had a follow the magenta line GPS track plotted to get in the hard to follow corridors

I then crossed to the higher altitude North Rim which was snowed in

North Rim road was snowed in

Grand Canyon Airport

It was a great flight, fantastic views and weather for November.

Greg, who was our host, took some time to introduce us to the workflow at SFO, and answer some of our questions for almost an hour, and then took us to the tower itself.
If you've never seen the SFO runway configuration, below is what it looks like. There are 2 long runways (NW-SE) for heavy takeoffs and landings, and two shorter runways for takeoffs. In the ideal configuration, winds permitting, planes land from the water and take off towards the water for noise abatement.

On a normal day, it works with just 4 people, and one is a supervisor who looks over everyone else to make sure nothing gets missed. It's also a lot more quiet than one would imagine, no people running around and screaming :)

The view is pretty fantastic and the job can be very challenging in days of bad weather. The day we came was an easy day where they were running all 4 runways at once in their usual configuration: the long runways for landings and the occasional heavy takeoff, and the shorter runways for takeoffs towards the bay.

note a bad office view :)

this is a clearance takeoff strip with assigned runway and initial altitude restriction

the weather computer runs linux

planes and arrival scope

planes arriving almost side to side

the taxi map tracking planes landing and ready for takeoff

solar panels