West Coast Road Trip - LA/Vegas/Grand Canyon

[YankeeZulu]

I’ve just started planning our big west coast road trip for my 40th next year. We’re flexible with dates and can take up to 3 weeks. So far I’ve planned to fly in to San Francisco, stay there for a few nights and drive down to LA with stops in Monterey, Cambria and Santa Barbara. We’ll stay in LA for a few days to do Disney and Universal for the DC’s. My plan was to then drive to Vegas for a night, then over to the Grand Canyon and back up through Death Valley, Mammoth Lakes and Yosemite with various overnight stops before driving back to SF to fly home. But I can’t make any sense of the LA/Vegas/Grand Canyon bit. It all seems a really long way apart with nowhere obvious to stop en-route. Is it really too far to drive from LA to Vegas. Should I plan to stop or take the hit with a long drive. Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Frankly I wouldn’t bother and I’d spend longer in California. What you are planning is 3 weeks is way too much.

If you stick to California and cut down on the driving you’ll have a great time. There is plenty to see in LA without doing wall to wall theme parks too. Death Valley is pointless too in many ways.

We didn’t like LV at all but the Grand Canyon is amazing. I would see it on a separate holiday though.

when we drove vegas to LA we stopped at whiskey petes in Primm then again in barstow to see part of the orig route 66 - the train station there is quite cool with the stops took about 6 hours to do the drive to LA the scenery is pretty cool

Thank you both for your replies. The chances of us going again are very slim so I’d like to pack as much in as we can. I’ve known people do a similar route in 2 weeks, so I thought 3 weeks would be ample time? Theme parks aren’t my thing but DC’s really want to do a day in each and its their holiday too, so I’ll have to bite the bullet on that one. 6 hours with stops sounds reasonable.

Distances seem far but there's hardly any traffic once outside cities so you can really shift (not speed but average the speed limit I should add)! I would suggest going from Anaheim (because we did it) staying in Furness creek (Death Valley) for the experience, onto the Grand Canyon (with stayed at angel lodge I think - long time ago) then Vegas (not kids can't go in gambling bits of casinos even in prams!) If you can manage it go to Yosemite en route to San Francisco.

We did it over 2 weeks btw

You have some really long drives there. I would do the following:
Fly to LA, spend a few days there. Fly to LV (if you must, I hated it!), do a trip from LV to the grand canyon by helicopter, then fly back to LA, work your way up the coast to SF & then do the other stuff from SF. It is a lot in 3 weeks though, but by flying you save time & a hell of a lot of miles. What you spend in flying/helicopters you will save in car hire, driving & hotels.

Mind you, I would do Yosemite over LV any day.

We did 2 weeks. Vegas, Yosemite, San Fran, Santa Barbara, LA and San Diego. We had two mega long drives in there though which I really wouldn’t fancy doing with children as we were both a bit frazzled afterwards. Also, how old are your DCs and would they appreciate/get anything out of Vegas? I was done with it pretty quickly and I could drink, gamble and deal with late nights!

DC’s will be 12 and 14 when we travel. And we’ve done a few road trips around Europe over the last few years. DH and I would like to go to Vegas, just for the sake of it really and it does seem a good stay over between LA and the Grand Canyon. We are considering a helicopter tour of the Canyon, but I’d like to to an overnight to see the sunset and sunrise. We could do that in Yosemite though? Flights are several hundred cheaper to fly into SF so I think we’re sort of decided on that...

It’s about a 4 hour drive from LA to Vegas, so not too far really. We’ve done it a couple of times and just did a stop halfway to stretch our legs and go to the loo.
Vegas is a bit marmite, people either love it or hate it!
Personally I think it’s fab. A really fun place with some spectacular sights and not to be taken too seriously.
I’d recommend at least 2-3 days there though as there is so much to see and do.
You can arrange trips to the Canyon from there. Lots of tour companies do helicopter trips and overnight stays too.

You seem to be making a mistake of trying to pack too much in, you could end up just driving from place to place without really seeing much except the dreaded steering wheel and scenery going past. It may be better to visit fewer places and stay longer in each.

Would mention that Disneyland is in the city of Anaheim in LA and Universal is situated in Universal city in the northern part of Los Angeles. It could well take around 2 hours to traverse between these two cities.

What time of year are you thinking of travelling. If it is say June to August I would skip Las Vegas altogether due to the high daytime temperatures, same for Death Valley.

I would really not want to travel from say somewhere near Universal studios down to Anaheim and back again. No no and no. Traffic can be horrendous and driving standards can be varied to say the very least.

If you do want to visit Disneyland I would stay in Anaheim and there are plenty of hotels there to choose from which are near the park.

Hey, we did a similar trip for our honeymoon, but no LA.

We had 5 nights in San Fran, then took 6 nights to drive from San Fran through Yosemite, death valley, around the grand canyon, then had 5 nights in LV. It was one of the best trips of our lives!

A point if you are Google mapping drive times just now. There's a road, the tionga pass perhaps, that will be open in the summer, but if you Googlemap it now it may show really long travel time through yosemite. We drove the road in mid September, went from snow and 5 degrees at the top, to it being desert and 35 degrees in death valley only a few hours later. We loved the change in scenery and environment!

We also did the helicopter flight from LV to the grand canyon as I wanted to land in the canyon itself. The trip did not disappoint, pricey, but amazing sipping cava at the bottom of the grand canyon!

There's plenty to do in Vegas without gambling, the food, the shows, the hotels, and exhibits are all fantastic as is the people watching.

Can you tell we loved the trip?!

Pp mentioned that using flights would save on hotels. ?? I can't see how it would as a 3 week trip, is a 3 weeks trip and needing hotels regardless of where you are, either driving or flying.

We did a 2wk holiday doing Vegas, Death Valley, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, monument valley and LA. If all those my fav was Zion. It may break up the journey to Grand Canyon if you do decide to drive.

The drive from LA to Vegas is boring but, out of all the drives you’re describing, one of the easiest. Unlike the Monterey to Santa Barbara drive, there’s very little to see. It’s very much a “put on the music/audiobook and drive” kind of drive!

You could drive from LA to LV via Barstow then pick up the old Route 66 for a bit, stopping at Amboy (home of the Amboy National Crater, the most eerily silent place I've ever been, and of Roy's motel and gas station which is an iconic Route 66 stop) then cut up through the Mojave National Preserve. We did that in a day and it was fine.

It's only a 4 hour drive to LV from LA and then 4 hours to Grand Canyon (you'll want to do the south rim, not west) in road trip terms that's nothing! We love a road trip, load of places outside of LV to do to: Death Valley, fire valley, red rock canyon. Hoover dam is on the way to GC. 3 weeks is plenty, I wouldn't be wasting time with flights, by the time you've checked in etc etc, get a fun car to drive, get off the main roads and go to small towns and diners as well as the big hitters, that's what road trips are about.

Valley of fire that should say!

I suppose o meant more time saving than money saving. If you drive places you use up days travelling. If you fly you save days. Even if somewhere is only 4 hours & all these drives took us longer than that, it's still really a day of your time. If you leave somewhere at 10 & arrive at 2 you aren't going to get a great deal done on that day.

Yeah I suppose so...but the drives are part of it for us, windows down, play list on, endless chatting (we go without the kids so good catch up time!), freedom to just pull over as and when we want. It's all part of it for us, even the "boring" routes. It's the freedom having the car brings that is intoxicating for us, but then I suppose it depends on what you want out of it.

Oooh RusholmeRuffian you just reminded me! We once stayed overnight in Barstow on the way to Vegas from LA!
Small little town in the middle of nowhere (well it was 20yrs ago!) with real old style motels and a few local restaurants. The locals were so friendly and we got some great advice about what to do/see in Vegas.
It was an impromptu stop (I find these are the best when on a road trip adventure)

If you can fit it in try and visit Sedona - beautiful little town, south of Flagstaff. We just spent the day there and didn’t stay but wish we had.

We went to Sedona as part of our canyons trip. Arizona and Utah really are a holiday of their own.

There is a huge amount to do in California without racing around everywhere. LV is just another theme park really. You are already looking at two of those. Try and spend a bit of time at the Getty Centre in LA. It’s a truly amazing building. Go and see the whales off Monteray. Go to the beach at Carmel. Enjoy lunch at Nepenthe. Go and visit some of the missions. Retrace the voyage of Sir Francis Drake. SF is a great city and so is LA when you get the touristy side out of the way. There are national parks, an amazing coast, wildlife to see, beaches everywhere and all of it better than LV for teens.

We spent three weeks on the west coast im August. We flew to Vegas as it was the quickest and cheapest flight. We drove through Death Valley, then wanted to go to Yosemite but it was closed due to fire. Instead, we went to Mammoth Lakes, Lake Tahoe and San Francisco. Then drove the coast and Big Sur to LA and San Diego. We went to the Grand Canyon via Lake Havasu and then back to Vegas to fly home.
Death Valley, Mammoth Lakes, Big Sur and the Grand Canyon were amazing. We didn't like any of the cities and wish we'd spent less time in them, and more in the national parks.
The driving is fine once you are out of the cities, just try to stay in each place at least two nights so you feel more rested.