About the Book

Detours to Destiny is a memoir by engineering trailblazer and business genius Elling Halvorson. An engineer and a passionate inventor, the book details Halvroson’s various pursuits engineering and technological advancement. It also documents his personal challenges and how he managed to overcome these obstacles. A man of adventures and creative solutions, Detours to Destiny, features Elling Halvorson’s many high-risk and seemingly impossible construction projects involving the Grand Canyon freshwater pipelines, helicopters and his various inventions. Lastly, Detours of Destiny is a book that inspires readers to soldier on and conquer the day.

Author Background

Elling Halvorson is a graduate of Oregon’s Willamette University with a degree in economics and engineering. He is spent his time inventing and designing technologies that are construction related. This led him to the Grand Canyon where he developed a freshwater pipeline from the North to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in the early 1960s with the use of helicopters. He then invested in Canyon air tours and is the chairman of paillon Airways Inc., the world’s largest air-tour provider, and has built up more than a dozen other family-owned businesses.

Realizing the bigger opportunity, he began selling Canyon air tours in 1965. Today he’s chairman of Papillon Airways Inc., the world’s largest air-tour provider along with numerous family-owned enterprises. Elling lives his wife, Barbara. Together they have raised four sons and a daughter.