When you are planning a trip to Las Vegas, you might also want to plan a few days out of that trip to visit one or more of the nearby national parks. If you are a local in the Las Vegas area, you also might be interested in riving to a nearby national park yourself (check out our self-drive tours.)The American southwest is one of the most spectacular areas on earth, and there are multiple parks and protected spaces within the region that you can travel to within a day’s drive. Even better, there are several of these parks that are accessible within only a few hours drive from your hotel room in Las Vegas, allowing you to take only a short amount of time out of your trip and still experience the unspoiled natural surroundings that are in the region. Las Vegas itself was created due to the fact that it was positioned about midpoint in the Mojave Desert if you are traveling from the east coast to the west coast, making it an appropriate point to stop in order to resupply or rest before the remainder of the trip. The national parks that are surrounding Las Vegas are also (for the most part) within this region, so it makes sense to use Las Vegas as the starting point for many of these driving trips. For those who are not local to the area and who need to fly into a city nearby to use as the starting point, Las Vegas makes sense because it has a major airport, it is a tourist destination on it’s own, and it also has a large selection of affordable hotels.
The trip to the different national parks that surround Las Vegas is generally best to consider in hours instead of miles, because driving through the desert is an experience that many are unfamiliar with. Driving a single mile through the desert can seem like many miles in populated areas, due to the fact that there is not much to look at. For this reason we create our list of 7 national parks that are within a day’s drive of Las Vegas, and how many hours it will take to drive there from the city center.
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Yosemite National Park: California, 7 Hours
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Zion National Park: Utah, 3 Hours
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Arches National Park: Utah, 8 Hours
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Bryce Canyon National Park: Utah, 3 Hours
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Monument Valley And Four Corners: Southwest US, 8 Hours
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Mesa Verde National Park: Colorado, 8 Hours
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The Grand Canyon: Arizona, 4.5 Hours
Each of these parks and protected spaces are going to have weather conditions and specific aspects that are different, and the climates can vary wildly even though they are all within several hundred miles of Las Vegas. Within the city itself you can experience temperatures over 110 degrees on summer days and on the same day experience temperatures in the 70s at many of these parks that are listed. It is best to do further research as far as the planning of your trip, both for what to bring as well as plotting the locations of gas stations and service areas along your route. Naturally, if you don’t want to drive yourself you can always arrange for us to take care of it for you by booking any of our tours to these national parks. Once you have experienced driving in the desert, you will realize that the tours themselves are worth the price just so that you do not have to drive!
Most of all, enjoy yourself and bring plenty of water in case anything was to go wrong. The southwestern United States is not like most other areas, and there are going to be stretches of road that go on for upwards of 100 miles where you might not see another car or a service station of any kind. Many cell providers will lose reception in these desolate areas, so make sure that you are prepared, or leave the driving to us!
Ready to plan your trip?
