Back in the 70's the PM of that time didn't like the military but he did like to use military helicopters to visit his citizens and get lots of exposure,photo ops and so on. Before each of his visits we did a trip to check out all of the landing sites and discuss the visit with local officials, police and others who would be involved. A one day visit to an area involved 2 or 3 days of advance visits to the places involved to make sure that there were no major obstacles or loose things in the landing areas that would get blown over by rotor wash and cause embarrassment to himself.
We were doing a RECCE of places in the Niagara Pensula for a visit and had some local police with us and the aircraft commander wanted to do something special so we did some flying around the falls area. The excuse was to provide them with a good look at the area of the river upstream of the falls so that they would have a better knowledge of the area in the event of having to perform a rescue. Our squadron was also tasked for SAR operations in the area during that time. Who could ever question such great cooperation and using the opportunity to check out the falls area in case we were called out for a SAR mission at the falls?
The visits were a great opportunity to see the BS and skulduggery involved in polotics up close but I won't elaborate. The excellent accommodations, meals and transportation provided by host communities and business were great. The presentation bottle of skid row wine from Jordan's Niagara factory was appalling.