Your Las Vegas vacation is going to be memorable. After all, Las Vegas is one of the most exciting cities on earth to visit, with all the shows, gambling and restaurants you can imagine. It wasn’t always this way, and the fact of the matter is that Las Vegas was once only a stopover for people who were traveling across the desert to get to California. Back before there were automobiles, people in wagons found the Mojave Desert too much to cross without restocking about half way across, which is why Las Vegas was born. It was a perfect location for people to stop, essentially in the middle of the desert and surrounded by nothing else for miles. You could stop and restock, as well as rest and maybe even have a drink or two before continuing on your way. While the location is really what made Las Vegas survive, the transformation into an area that people wanted to visit as the destination was what made it grow. Las Vegas catered to providing the things that people couldn’t get elsewhere, essentially allowing behaviors that would be frowned upon or outright illegal elsewhere. If it was something that people wanted, Las Vegas tried to attract you by providing it. Couple this with the fact that it is perfectly situated in between other areas of interest, and you have the perfect starting point for many road trips. If the destination is in the southwest and is only accessible by car, then Las Vegas is probably the perfect place to start the journey.
There are numerous national parks surrounding Las Vegas, all within about a half-day drive. You can get to some of the best national parks in the USA within only a short drive from the city, including The Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion and Monument Valley. All of these areas are within about a 4 hour drive, and Zion is actually only a 2.5 hour drive. The accessibility of these parks from Las Vegas is least for anyone who needs to fly to a starting point in order to start their trip, and who does not live within a viable drive of the parks. These areas do not have airports close enough to allow most people to fly directly to them, and even if there are airports nearby they are not close enough to actually not require a rental car and a drive of at least a few hours. Las Vegas makes the most sense as the starting point due to the fact that it supports commercial airline traffic, has the most restaurants and hotels of any city in the area, and is a destination onto itself. The combination of your Las Vegas vacation and your national parks road trip makes sense.
So when you are planning a visit to any of the beautiful national parks or protected spaces in the southwest, make sure you start your trip from Las Vegas. If you don’t want to make the drive yourself, let us do it for you.