Road Tripping Las Vegas to Grand Canyon [Image Heavy]

We decided before we left New Zealand for our USA trip that we would spend a couple of days and hire a car to explore the Grand Canyon, after Kyle’s competition and before heading to New York.

We both wanted to hire an American Muscle Car for the trip as we thought it would be fun to explore part of America in an American car, plus there is no way we will be owning one anytime soon!

After a bit of a run around with the Rental Company we booked through (we turned up and they didn’t have any Dodge Chargers (or similar) that we booked and they offered us an SVU… errrm not what we wanted!), we managed to get a 2016 Camaro from a different company albeit quiet a bit more expensive than what we originally booked.

With our bags packed and the car ready to go we set out for the Grand Canyon South Rim.

After doing some research on the Grand Canyon I decided that it would be best to head for the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, even though it was substantially further away than the West Rim.

The original plan was to head to the Hoover Dam on the way to the Grand Canyon and then see how close we could get to the Canyon before choosing somewhere to stay for the night. We ended up completely missing the Hoover Dam as I had read on the internet that if you went to the Arizona side you could avoid the $10 parking fee in the Nevada side – however I didn’t realise you had to take the Hoover Dam turnoff first #fail

With that failure in planning we decided to just keep going and do the Hoover Dam on the way back. We stopped at a little lookout area and I would highly recommend doing so if you are doing a road trip from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon. The trip from Las Vegas to Grand Canyon can take anywhere from 4-5 hours depending on which route you decide to take and how much you stop along the way.

We made it to Williams just as the sun was setting and it was starting to become dark so we decided to use the free WIFI from the McDonalds car park and find somewhere to stay for the night and then take the short drive to the Grand Canyon the next morning.

We ended up staying at the Travelodge in Williams, it was reasonably priced, close to town (everything is!), free Wifi and free breakfast. It was perfectly fine for what we needed and I’d recommend it if you aren’t a luxury traveller.

The trip from Williams to the Grand Canyon National Park is about an hour-long and a pretty drive. I’ll do some posts on the Grand Canyon at a later point so won’t go into my thoughts on the Grand Canyon and photos of the Canyon in this post.

After spending the day at the Grand Canyon we spent a second night in Williams and left early the next morning to head back to Las Vegas. We decided to take the old Route 66 back to Las Vegas and stop back in at the Hoover Dam on the way back.

The old Route 66 was a bit of a pain to find, we went off at Ash Fork and followed the Route 66 signs with no luck so decided to get back on the freeway and try again to find Route 66 at Seligman which was a lot more successful.

We pulled over at one point on Route 66 to take some photos as it was absolutely beautiful! It was definitely a lot quieter than the freeway and the speed limit was 10 miles per hour less than the freeway so if you were wanting to get somewhere quicker you would be better to take the freeway.
I was expecting Route 66 to be very pretty and very touristy so I was surprised when we didn’t come across a tonne of places with old America memorabilia and the likes. Instead there was only once place we came across which matched this description and it was awesome!
I love cactus’ for some strange reason, so I was really looking forward to seeing those big cacti you see in the old american movies, so I was a bit disappointed when we had travelled all the way from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon without really seeing any.

I was super stoked that there were a few cacti at the place we stopped at along Route 66.

Overall I really enjoyed spending a couple of days and road tripping from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon via car. I’m super grateful to Kyle for driving the whole trip as I most likely would have had an accident driving on the other side of the road!

I’ll post some more updates over the next couple of weeks, things have been pretty busy and aren’t likely to slow down any time this year!

Where is your favourite place to road trip? Have you ever driven on the other side of the road? How did it go? – Leave a comment and let me know, I love hearing from you!