LAS VEGAS · NEVADA
All-night neon, all-day desert.
Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam day trips, helicopter flights over the rim, Cirque and close-up magic on the Strip, ATV runs through the Mojave, and the red-rock country an hour from the lights.
Only here
Three days that begin nowhere else.
Casinos and buffets turn up in other cities now. A helicopter onto the canyon floor, a boulevard built for resident shows, and the Hoover Dam half an hour out are the ones that still start here.
Below the rim
The Canyon by Helicopter
No road gets you here. Helicopters lift off the Strip, cross Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, then drop thousands of feet below the Grand Canyon rim to land on the floor beside the Colorado, a champagne toast a mile down. Las Vegas is the only city you can take off from and stand at the bottom by lunchtime.
- 1 Las Vegas Helicopter Night Strip Flight Tour with Optional Dinner
- 2 Grand Canyon Deluxe Helicopter Tour with Landing from Las Vegas
- 3 Las Vegas: Night Helicopter Flight over Las Vegas Strip
Resident act
The Strip's Resident Shows
No other street on earth runs this many permanent productions at once. Magicians hold residencies measured in decades, illusionists fill purpose-built theatres, and the marquees change on the same four blocks night after night. Finding a show was never the hard part. Choosing one is.
- 1 David Copperfield at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino
- 2 Small Group Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, 7 Magic Mountains VIP Tour
- 3 The Mentalist at Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino
Concrete colossus
Hoover Dam
Thirty minutes southeast, a wall of concrete seven hundred feet high holds back the Colorado and made modern Las Vegas possible. Walk the crest between two states and two time zones, ride down into the power plant, then cross the bypass bridge for the view straight down the black canyon the river cut.
- 1 Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and Skywalk
- 2 Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop, Breakfast, Lunch & Skywalk
- 3 Grand Canyon West Bus Tour with Hoover Dam and Optional Skywalk
The headline act
Book this one before anything else.
If your trip makes room for a single thing beyond the Strip, this is the one most travellers reach for first.
The headliners
Las Vegas’s Most Popular Tours
Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, the helicopter flights and the desert runs. The days most visitors leave the Strip for.
Where to begin
The trips a Las Vegas visit is built around.
The Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, the helicopter flights, the Arizona slot canyons, the desert runs and the shows. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big day trip
How to do the Grand Canyon.
It is two and a half hours to the West Rim, more than four to the South, so the how decides the day. Three ways to reach the canyon from Las Vegas, by the time you have and the budget you bring.
After dark
The Strip was built for the show.
Pick a night and there are dozens of marquees to weigh up. Big-top acrobatics under a custom-built dome, a magician you grew up watching, an arena headliner, a basement comedy club, a lounge crooner running the old standards. One boulevard, and just about every kind of evening on it.
See the best shows on the Strip →Fifteen miles west
Red rock, the moment you leave town.
Red Rock Canyon’s banded sandstone walls rise a half-hour drive from the Strip, a thirteen-mile scenic loop with trailheads at every pullout. An hour northeast, Valley of Fire burns a deeper orange, with petroglyphs older than the casinos by a few thousand years. Either one is a half-day, and a different planet from the boulevard.
See the desert parks →The river
An emerald canyon in the Mojave.
Below Hoover Dam the Colorado turns a startling green and slides through Black Canyon between thousand-foot walls. Paddle the slow water to the Emerald Cave, soak in a riverside hot spring, or open up Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country, all inside an hour of the Strip.
Kayak & river trips →The photograph
The slot canyon you have already seen.
Those shafts of light dropping through a narrow sandstone slot, and the Colorado bending a full horseshoe around a lone rock tower, are Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend, on Navajo land near Page, Arizona. The long day out from Las Vegas is how most people finally stand in them instead of just scrolling past.
- 1 Lower Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend Day Tour with Lunch
- 2 Las Vegas: Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend
- 3 Antelope Canyon & Horseshoe Bend from Vegas, Lunch, Free WiFi
By intensity
Pick your day, by intensity.
Las Vegas does every speed. A slow loop of the Strip when you want it easy, a full day out in the desert when you want more, or a flight, a dune run and a free-fall before dinner.
Take it easy
Slow days and big views.Open-top bus loops of the Strip, observation decks at golden hour, and a long lunch somewhere between the casinos.
The classic day out
Out to the desert and back.Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam by coach, the Arizona slot canyons, and the red-rock loops within an hour of town.
Full throttle
Air, dust and recoil.Helicopter flights below the canyon rim, ATV runs through the Mojave dunes, skydives over the valley and the big-bore gun ranges.
The Mojave
Wide-open desert, full throttle.
The Mojave starts where the suburbs stop. ATVs, dune buggies and side-by-sides run the sand bowls and rock trails out past Nellis and around the Valley of Fire, kicking up a rooster tail of dust with the whole valley to yourself. Some runs finish at a ghost town, some at a dune field, all of them a long way from a slot machine.
See all 82 ATV & off-road tours →By place
The Southwest, six ways.
Grand Canyon for the big one. Hoover Dam for the engineering. Red Rock and Valley of Fire for the colour close to town. Zion and Bryce for the Utah canyons. And the long road west to LA.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Helicopter if you want the canyon from above. ATV if you want the desert fast. A show if you want the night. Kayak, gun range, observation deck, or a Strip loop at sunset.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time? A long weekend that hits the desert and the Strip without a wasted hour.
Just added