It’s easy to get lost in the glitz and glamor of Las Vegas. Shining in the Nevada desert like a gemstone, Vegas pulls all the focus (and most of the electricity) in the state.
But savvy travelers know that Vegas is just the flashiest jewel in the crown of a region brimming with star attractions. There’s more amazing scenery, history, and excitement within half a day’s drive from Las Vegas, especially for lovers of nature and national parks. Tour companies offer day trips to any of them in air-conditioned coaches, luxury vehicles, ATVs, even helicopters!
Venture off the Strip and see what the region has in store for you. Here are the 20 most bad-ass day trips from Las Vegas every first-time visitor should know about.
1. Red Rock Canyon
Driving Time from the Strip: 28 minutes
It’s hard to believe that you’re on the same planet as Las Vegas, let alone the same state when you visit Red Rock Canyon. Yet less than half an hour away from the Strip, alone amid the bluffs with striking stripes of red sediment painted between the layers by eons of time, it’s easy to forget anybody ever invented Blackjack or Cirque du Soleil.
Leisurely six-hour or four-hour driving tours are available. The longer tour includes a stop at a ranch formerly owned by eccentric tycoon Howard Hughes.
To learn more about Red Rock Canyon, click here.
2. Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend
Driving Time from the Strip: 29 minutes
There are few more striking sights than Antelope Canyon, a world-famous slot canyon located on a Navajo reservation. Walk amid mind-boggling rock formations, shaped into an undulating maze of corridors by wind and water, as narrow as they are towering. The whole canyon is only a quarter of a mile long, so you can explore the entire unearthly natural wonder in just a few hours.
Nearby on the reservation is Horseshoe Bend, a vertigo-inducing 1,000-foot plunge from clifftop to riverbed, unprotected by guardrails. Watch your step!
To learn more about Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend, click here.
3. Boulder City, NV
Driving Time from the Strip: 32 minutes
Boulder City is the only municipality close to Vegas where gambling is not allowed. What is allowed, however, is skydiving. Enjoy the true best views of the Strip—from midair, after you jump out of an airplane.
Boulder City is also the gateway to Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, making this an easy stopping or staging point for trips to the popular attractions.
To learn more about Boulder City, NV, click here.
4. Lake Mead National Recreation Area
Driving Time from the Strip: 34 minutes (closest point)
Lake Mead National Recreation Area covers a massive swath of Nevada and Arizona between Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Mojave are both manmade lakes, formed from the damming of the Colorado River by Hoover Dam (see below).
It doesn’t take long to get here, but start early, because there’s a lot to see and do. Kayak along the banks of the lakes and rivers to discover quaint lakeside beaches to have lunch, swim, and catch some rays.
To learn more about Lake Mead National Recreation Area, click here.
5. Hoover Dam
Driving Time from the Strip: 42 minutes
Commissioned by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression, Hoover Dam (originally named “Boulder Dam”) was a marvel of engineering when it was constructed, and it still impresses to this day. Operating 24 hours a day and producing 4.2 terawatts-per-hour of hydroelectric energy from the impounded waters of Lake Mead, Hoover Dam has lost none of its appeal.
The dizzying view down its 726-foot sloping concrete face would almost be enough. Explore the guts of the dam, with its titanic generators and yawning diversion tunnels, and it’s easy to think you’re visiting a piece of machinery designed by giants, for giants. A dazzling day trip from Las Vegas for engineers and non-engineers alike.
To learn more about Hoover Dam, click here.
6. Techatticup Gold Mine and ElDorado Canyon
Driving Time from the Strip: 47 minutes
El Dorado Canyon is an ATV-lover’s dream come true. Ride an ATV or UTV from Las Vegas into a backcountry full of soaring multicolored monoliths under a vast open sky.
Any day trip from Las Vegas to El Dorado Canyon is incomplete without a trip to Techatticup Gold Mine, a creepy abandoned shaft reputed to be haunted by the souls who went to their doom chasing sparkly veins and nuggets of gold in the 19th Century Gold Rush. Eat lunch at a preserved Old West town, built on the ruins of a period mining camp. A true ATV-ride into history.
To learn more about Techatticup Gold Mine and Eldorado Canyon, click here.
7. Mojave National Preserve
Driving Time from the Strip: 48 minutes
There’s so much natural wonder to marvel at in Mojave National Preserve, you’ll forget Las Vegas is less than an hour away. Lose yourself amid Joshua Tree forests, an extinct volcano, “singing dunes,” and the desert’s famous red-bluff cliffs. The perfect place to escape for a day from the sparkling lights to be alone with nature.
To learn more about Mojave National Preserve, click here.
8. Mt. Charleston
Driving Time from the Strip: 49 minutes
Officially known as Spring Mountains National Recreation Area, Mt. Charleston sits on the western edge of the Las Vegas Valley, where higher rainfall nourishes fragrant pine, juniper, and mahogany forests. The tiny village of Mt. Charleston, nestled in the national preserve, is your jumping-off point for excursions to the picnic area at Cathedral Rock or Lee Canyon Ski Resort, which features three lifts, 30 runs, and a park for snowboarders.
To learn more about Mt. Charleston, click here.
9. Valley of Fire State Park
Driving Time from the Strip: 58 minutes
Amazing desert splendor and beauty await you in the Valley of Fire State Park—40,000 acres of Aztec sandstone, red like fire and dotted with petrified trees. Explore the ancient landscape and you can discover ancient petroglyphs left behind by Native Americans, inscribed into the arresting wind-swept rock formations. The state park contains aptly named lookout points like Fire Canyon, Rainbow Vista, Silica Dome, and the White Domes, each one more spectacular than the last.
To learn more about Valley of Fire State Park, click here.
10. Emerald Cave Kayak Tour
Driving Time from the Strip: 1 hour, 3 minutes
A trip by kayak through Emerald Cave takes you amid ancient rock formations carved by the gentle, insistent water of the Colorado River. Shuttled in air-conditioned coaches from the Strip, small groups of 15 people or less are your companions on a leisurely meander amid cool caves and peaceful riverbanks where you can swim and enjoy a snack among the reeds.
To learn more about Emerald Cave Kayak Tours, click here.
11. St. George, UT
Driving Time from the Strip: 1 hour, 55 minutes
This is where Utahns summer, protected from the heavy regional winters by mild climate and affordable prices. The tight, beautiful historical core forms the heart of a region dominated by a love for the outdoors—hiking, biking, state parks, and the search for sought-after fossilized dinosaur tracks.
To learn more about St. George, UT, click here.
12. Rhyolite, NV
Driving Time from the Strip: 1 hour, 55 minutes
Want to see a ghost town? Rhyolite is your go-to, less than two hours from the Strip and perfect for a day trip from Las Vegas. Four miles from the occupied town of Beatty, Rhyolite was founded on the edge of Death Valley as a gold rush camp, exploding to a population of as much as 5,000 with financing from magnate Charles Schwab. When financial panic followed in the wake of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, the town died as quickly as it boomed, leaving behind skeletal structures of buildings for you to explore.
To learn more about Rhyolite, click here.
13. Death Valley National Park
Driving Time from the Strip: 1 hour, 56 minutes
The scathing fire-and-brimstone name belies a symphony of desert beauty beyond the Death Valley visitor’s center, less than two hours’ day trip from Las Vegas—dunes, canyons, rambling boulders, extinct volcanoes, 11,000-foot soaring peaks, and striking desert oases encircled by palm trees.
This is the largest national park in the Lower 48 states, home of the country’s hottest recorded temperature (134 degrees Fahrenheit) and the US’s lowest point below sea level (282 feet, lower than anywhere in Florida or Louisiana).
To learn more about Death Valley National Park, click here.
14. Grand Canyon West Rim, Skywalk, or Helicopter Tour
Driving Time from the Strip: 2 hours, 11 minutes to the West Rim (less by helicopter!)
They say that just about every destination disappoints you in some way, that nothing lives up to the hype — except the Grand Canyon. The most aptly named natural wonder of the world is absolutely breathtaking and unreal. Believe all the superlatives.
The West Ridge is just over two hours from Las Vegas by car and features accommodations run by Native American tribes. If you’re not afraid of heights, you can walk 70 feet over the Grand Canyon in the Skywalk, a glass corridor, and look down between your feet through the transparent glass at an uninterrupted 4,000-foot drop.
Want to skip the drive and take your Grand Canyon tour to a whole other level? Consider a helicopter tour from the Strip! It’s more affordable than you think and so worth it.
To learn more about Grand Canyon Tours, click here.
15. Area 51
Driving Time from the Strip: 2 hours, 20 minutes to Rachel, NV
The truth is out there, but don’t expect to get too close—the US Air Force testing facility at Groom Lake, known popularly as Area 51, is guarded by armed sentries known as “Cammo Guys” by the locals. You can walk up to the fortified perimeter — but you can’t go further, and the “Cammo Guys” are not talking. They certainly won’t acknowledge what has been widely rumored — that the corpses and technology of crashed extraterrestrials are the true subjects of the experiments at Area 51.
Even without access to the base, there’s plenty to do on a day trip from Las Vegas to Area 51. Eat an “Alien Burger” (not made from real aliens … probably) at L’il A’Le’Inn in nearby Rachel, NV, or shop for campy alien memorabilia at the “Alien Research Center,” a gift shop built into a Quonset Hut.
Keep your eyes peeled, though, and your ears open. Strange sonic booms emit from Area 51 all the time, amid reports of lights in the sky, purported to be flying saucers prowling the region to retrieve their colleagues!
To learn more about Area 51, click here.
16. Zion National Park
Driving Time from the Strip: 2 hours, 42 minutes
The Grand Canyon wins the “most impressive” of the desert, but Zion National Park wins the beauty contest. Here you can find mind-boggling, otherworldly landscapes of fire-engine-red rock formations that look painted by the hands of a Master Painter in the Sky. The thin layers of sediment exposed by wind and water in the rock formations tell the secret stories of ages past.
To learn more about Zion National Park, click here.
17. Hidden Valley and Primm Valley
Driving Time from the Strip: 3 hours, 25 minutes
Even the most experienced ATV star will find a challenge in an extreme ATV, quad, or RZR tour of Hidden Valley and Primm Valley. The trails and ridges between the two valleys form a series of natural racetracks, the native habitat of the adrenaline junkie.
To learn more about Hidden Valley and Primm Valley, click here.
18. Bryce Canyon National Park
Driving Time from the Strip: 4 hours, 6 minutes
The towering landscapes of Bryce Canyon are truly unique. Sitting at a higher altitude than Zion, the rock formations here have experienced repeated thaws and freezes, creating delicate pinnacles known as “hoodoos” alongside shark-like fins and dagger-filled amphitheaters. It’s like a drive to the moon.
To learn more about Bryce Canyon National Park, click here.
19. Los Angeles/Hollywood Tour
Driving Time from the Strip: 4 hours, 12 minutes
If you haven’t visited the home of the stars, it’s actually a passable day trip from Las Vegas. Look for your favorite stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, test your hands against the handprints of the stars at TCL Chinese Theater, and come face to face with actual stars haggling with agents and producers at swank bistros off Hollywood Boulevard. This is where celebrity dreams come true.
To learn more about Los Angeles and Hollywood, click here.
20. Dixie National Forest
Driving Time from the Strip: 5 hours, 27 minutes
Sprawling over two million acres just on the edge of a viable day trip from Las Vegas (if you get up early), Dixie National Forest pushes beyond Bryce Canyon into acres of hiking opportunities amid red-rock landscapes. An epic journey for the true outdoorsman or outdoorswoman.
To learn more about Dixie National Forest, click here.
