On Monday, Jay and Elizabeth - Dean's World readers - pledged $125 for Brian and I to make the trip back out to the Grand Canyon Skywalk. We had gone the day after Thanksgiving and reported back about our experiences there. At the time we did not pay the exorbitant prices to take the bus to the area where the skywalk would be built (or to be able to get close to the Grand Canyon and see it without fencing, for that matter).

Due to the reading public's thirst for knowledge, this time we did.

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Dean Esmay is certain that our little Sky-walk project is a fraud.

I posted The Grand canyon, behind a fence a couple of days ago, and expressed my disgust in the entire thing. The greed and the "cheap" feel of it all was really something that was almost hard to put to words.

When Dean posted that it was a fraud, it frightened me a little at first. It was pretty strong verbiage, and wasn't the exact point I was trying to get across. But the more I thought about it, the more that it made sense. That he was able to pull that out of my story when I didn't even see it myself, is pretty much par for the course, I would suppose.

Once he pointed it out, Brian and I started talking about the temporary buildings, the temporary jet fuel tanks sitting out there, and fact that the road to this thing - which is supposed to turn into a high class resort, is dirt and is on BLM protected land. It's not going to be paved. For that matter, how long will the BLM allow all that traffic to go through there?

Then there's the matter of them claiming that the "Final testing" was done in May, and it could withstand 71 million pounds, and 100 MPH winds. Well, there's no structure there! How do you do "Final Testing" on something that isn't built yet, and there isn't another one anywhere.

Dean told Snopes that it was likely a fraud and they were not only not convinced, but pretty condescending about it all. So, he's called for donations for me to go out there, take the expensive bus ride to it, and get pictures.

If anyone here is interested in donating to the cause, eye_catchers@frontiernet.net is my pay-pal Addy. We'll be going this week - I'm thinking as early as Tuesday.

I'm betting that it originally was planned, but that the BLM got in the way of it with their protected Joshua forest, and the developers pulled out. The Hualapai nation is likely trying to get their money back out of what they've done thus far, and so they're not announcing it to anyone - yet. They have enjoyed a big increase in visitors since this story broke. Like I said, I didn't even know that I could access the canyon this close to my home, and have always taken visiting friends and relatives up north to see the Canyon - and i've been in this area since 1988.

I'm thinking of all the people that are buying property out there in Dolan Springs right now. My mother owns a lot out there, and in the past she's gotten letters with people offering 1,500 dollars for it. 2 weeks ago she got a letter with someone offering her 10 thousand for it. Are people investing in something that will never come to fruition?

What do you think? Is it a fraud, or just behind schedule? Can we prove Snopes was conned?

Last weekend, on the day after Thanksgiving, Brian (plutarck) and I decided to take a drive out to the Grand Canyon Skywalk. I learned about it when the Snopes feed came through my LJ, and many of the people there were complaining about how they were marring up the beautiful scenery with this thing. I argued that this was done by the Hualapai Nation tribe, and that I was sure it would be done in as much of a non-intrusive manner as possible, and they would respect the environment.

The sky-walk is supposed to be finished early in 2006, and so we expected to find it near completion. We were hoping to get some photos of a work in progress. Brian and I were both very excited to see it, and this was going to be a great outing for us. The Skywalk is at Grand Canyon West, and up until now, I didn't even know that you could access the canyon from this close to our home. It only took us about 2 and a half hours or so to get out there.

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