Las Vegas Off the Beaten Path Tips by soccergrrl

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is about a 30 minute drive from the Strip, but it seems a world away. This is the place to head if you need a quick, close break from the lights, noise, smoke, and money-hemorrhage of Vegas. There is a nice visitor center surrounded by a desert tortoise habitat, and nothing but desert hills and mountains as far as the eye can see. You can see an awful lot from simply driving the one-way 13-mile loop that goes through the area, but I highly recommend getting out and doing some walking/hiking. When you enter the area you'll receive a map that details all the trails -- what you'll see, how long they take, and how hard you'll have to work. I hiked the Ice Box Canyon trail, which took about 2 hours altogether.

Keep an eye out for a travelogue or two that will highlight the photos I took in this gorgeous landscape. (Be sure to enlarge the photo here to see the whole panorama.)

To get there from the Strip, head north on Las Vegas Boulevard and turn left on Charleston Boulevard (also called Hwy 159). The entrance is about 17 miles away, on your right.

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Website: http://www.redrockcanyon.blm.gov/

Well worth the hour or so drive from Vegas, Hoover Dam is a true engineering marvel. Built, and still operated, for the purpose of flood control, the sale of electricity generated by the water tamed and harnessed by the dam pays for its operation. The biggest customer is the state of California. Be sure to contemplate the sheer arrogance it took to decide to undertake such a task in the first place, and then contemplate undertaking and completing that task with the technology available in the 1930s. Top that with the fact that the US was in the midst of the Great Depression at the time!

On the way to or from the dam, you can check out Lake Mead too. It's somewhat bizarre to see this huge lake in the middle of what is otherwise sandy, rocky desert.

I plan a small travelogue with a few more photos.

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Website: http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/

This has its own VT page, so look for more of my pictures in a travelogue there. Meantime, let me say here: this is, hands down, one of the most breathtaking, jaw-dropping, awesome places I have ever been. Neither words nor photos can do it justice; I took my husband back there, after I'd already been the day before, because I simply couldn't share the experience with him any other way than literally to be there with him. The park is about an hour's drive from Vegas, very much in the middle of nowhere. But it's a very scenic nowhere, and the park itself is most definitely somewhere.

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Website: http://www.desertusa.com/nvval/

If (or should I say "when") you are ready for a break from the heat and hustle of the Strip, rent a car and head for the hills. But these are real, live mountains, not just hills, and they are less than an hour from Las Vegas. Mt. Charleston and the surrounding canyon areas provide many hiking opportunities in the warmer months, and skiing and snowboarding in the winter months. When we were there in early May, there was still plenty of snow on some of the trails! See my Mt. Charleston page for more photos.

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Website: http://www.hikinglasvegas.com/MtCharleston.html