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Good morning travelers. I’m so lucky. Y’know why? I have a job that I love, helping folks like you plan their Grand Canyon vacations. And my job revolves around a place that, after 25 years working in and around, I am still learning about. Case in point: I learned a fascinating new tidbit of Grand Canyon history, and did it whilst traveling near a totally different National Park!
Our family recently made a trip to Idaho Falls, Idaho to join an old friend for a day of soaking, hiking, watersliding and huckleberry hunting at a place called the Heise Hot Springs. After leaving Idaho Falls, we passed through Jackson Hole Wyoming, which is the gateway community to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. One of the attractions we made a point to stop at was the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum. Tucked in between the displays of a 4-horned “geep” skull (hybrid of sheep and goat… yes, really) and a collection of antique bedpans (yes, really) was a placard with a comic book-style drawing of the Grand Canyon, and a piece of Grand Canyon history trivia: Robert Ripley, founder of the ‘Believe It Or Not’ museums, gave the first ever live radio broadcast from the bottom of the Grand Canyon!
From Ripley’s Newsroom.com:
Ripley pioneered “on-location” broadcasts from the strangest locales and performed many “firsts” in the history of radio. He was the first person to broadcast from ship to shore, the first to broadcast from Australia to America, and the first to broadcast around the world simultaneously using a corps of translators. He interviewed a handler of poisonous snakes from a snake pit in Florida and a daredevil skydiver in Georgia while falling 12,000 feet before opening his parachute. He went behind Niagara Falls and to the bottom of a shark tank. He went underground in the Carlsbad Caverns, down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and he even dragged his staff and equipment to the North Pole!
I did not know that! But now I do – and so do you 🙂
’til next time, make this day as “grand” as you can!
