Grand Canyon Tours & Things to Do

How Much Time Do You Have to Spend Visiting the Grand Canyon?

If you only have a few hours to see the Grand Canyon, consider booking an air or helicopter tour. Quick airplane tours are widely available Grand Canyon (Tusayan) Airport. Because airplane tours can accommodate 6-8 passengers at a time, they tend to be relatively affordable and are a prime way to see the Grand Canyon in a short amount of time. These short, non-landing air tours provide aerial views only, flying over the Grand Canyon, Painted Desert and the Kaibab Plateau on a circuit from the South to the North Rim and back.

Similarly, helicopter tours are an excellent choice for those short on time. These tours range in duration and price, but there is something for almost every pocketbook and schedule. If you only have a few hours, you will want to choose a helicopter tour that takes off from the South Rim airport near Tusayan, and opt for a 25-to 45-minute tour. Either way, you'll marvel at the pilot's expert narration, personalized attention, and stunning aerial views, a perspective you can only get from a helicopter or airplane.

Half-day tours to the Grand Canyon are widely available from Las Vegas to the West Rim. With 5–6 hours to spend, you can travel by airplane or helicopter, landing at the West Rim and either step off the aircraft to ride the hop-on-hop-off shuttle around Grand Canyon West, including the Grand Canyon Skywalk and Guano Point, or take a helicopter below the Rim landing on the Canyon floor for a champagne picnic.

With a full day to spend visiting the Grand Canyon, the array of options opens up as wide as the Canyon itself. Choose from ground tours from Las Vegas, Flagstaff or Sedona or air/ground combination tours from Las Vegas or Phoenix. Typically, full day tours pickup from your departure city hotel in a comfortable van, bus or coach and offer visitors anywhere from 11 to 16 hours to travel in stress-free comfort, stopping at all the best viewpoints and attractions along the way.

Combination tours, like airplane and helicopter tours that fly out from Las Vegas, land at either the West Rim or the South Rim. At Grand Canyon West, you can spend the rest of the full day utilizing the hop-on-hop-off shuttle to tour Eagle Point, the Grand Canyon Skywalk, Guano Point and Grand Canyon West Ranch. With extra time to spare, fill your itinerary with horseback riding along the rim, a helicopter landing on the floor of the Canyon, or a boat ride on the Colorado River. Full-day tours like this generally last 11–13 hours.

If your combo tour is headed for the South Rim, you'll land in Tusayan at the Grand Canyon Airport, then be whisked away in a touring van to visit the National Park. With several hours dedicated to allowing leisurely visits to all the viewpoints around Grand Canyon Village, you'll get to see "the real Grand Canyon" without feeling rushed or shortchanged.

One of the most popular full day tours is the Grand Canyon Railway. Depart the train depot in Williams in the morning, and enjoy an outstanding ride right to the South Rim. Take several hours to explore Grand Canyon Village and its many scenic overlooks, visitor centers, gift shops, and museums before climbing aboard the train for a late-afternoon return trip to Williams.

If heart-pounding whitewater action is your thing, but you don't have a week to spend going down the Colorado River, check out 1-day river rafting from Peach Springs to Grand Canyon West. The Hualapai River Runners are the exclusive provider of 1-day white river rafting at the Grand Canyon, and you can book these tours through a tour broker like Rivers and Oceans, or directly with the Hualapai tribe. Expect to spend the night before at the Hualapai Lodge in Peach Springs, and be on the river from dawn 'til dusk. A shuttle will take you back to Peach Springs at the close of the day.

Finally, if you're starting from Phoenix, you'll need a full day to take a ground tour to the South Rim. Choose a tour that picks up at your Phoenix area hotel in the early morning, and enjoy a relaxing day of expert narration, scenic views and fully guided fun. Plan on about 16 hours start to finish, with about 9 hours of driving round trip.

Multi-day ground tours to the Grand Canyon are the ideal solution for visitors who do not want to drive themselves but want to see as much of the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Las Vegas and/or Phoenix as possible. These tours also have the added bonus of building in Grand Canyon-area lodging to your trip itinerary, which makes the planning process that much easier. Check out multi-day trips that start in Las Vegas, touring the Grand Canyon and Sedona and ending in Phoenix, or vice versa. There are also longer tours that actually hit 8 National Parks and monuments of the Grand Circle, spanning thousands of miles of Arizona and Utah over a several-night excursion.

Another common type of multi-night Grand Canyon adventure is the Colorado River whitewater rafting trip. Choose from the Upper Canyon or Lower Canyon, spending 3–7 days on the river, or really go for the gusto and spend a couple of weeks rafting the entire length of the Canyon. These trips are typically once-in-a-lifetime adventures, need to be booked about a year in advance and require a significant budget, but the payoff is a memorable experience of epic proportions.

Finally, outdoor enthusiasts may want to hook up with a professional backpacking guide to lead them on a multi-night hiking trip down into the Grand Canyon. The benefit of doing a backpacking trip with a pro is that all of the equipment, meal planning and logistics are taken care of for you. If you're doing a rim-to-rim trip, the guides will arrange one-way transportation back to your starting point, and professionals also manage the entire backcountry permit process.