This is part one of three from a single journey: ten days and 1,645 kilometres from Las Vegas through Nevada, Utah and Arizona and back, between the end of December and the first week of January. Part one covers Las Vegas, the Valley of Fire and Zion; part two Page, Antelope Canyon and Monument Valley on horseback; part three the Grand Canyon in winter and Route 66 down to Oatman.
We landed in Las Vegas on the evening of 29 December with a plan written mostly in place names: Zion, Page, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, Route 66. What we did not have was a sense of how much the driving itself would matter. By the end of the trip, some of the hours I remember best were the ones spent between the stops rather than at them.
It is a route you can do in ten days without rushing, and it works in winter better than most people expect: the parks are empty, the light is low and long all day, and the only thing you really give up is the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which closes for the season.
Two nights in Las Vegas, and a concert inside a sphere
We stayed at the Venetian from the night we landed until the morning of 1 January. I will keep Las Vegas short, because it is not what this trip was about — but one evening deserves its own paragraph.
On 30 December we went to see Anyma's The End of Genesys at the Sphere. The screen wraps around and above you until the room stops being a room, and for an hour and a half you lose the sense of where the building ends. The practical detail worth knowing: from the Venetian you reach the Sphere entirely on foot, through the covered walkway that connects the two. No taxi, no queue on the Strip, no coats to carry. Bags are another matter — the Sphere allows only very small ones, so leave everything in the room.
New Year's Eve we spent in the city without a plan, which in Las Vegas is a plan in itself. On the morning of 1 January we checked out, collected the car, and the actual trip began.
The car: a Cybertruck, rented through Turo
We have rented through Turo several times in the United States and it has always gone perfectly smoothly — this time was no different. Turo is car sharing rather than a rental company: you book a specific car from its owner, and for a road trip that means you can choose exactly the car you want rather than a category.
We took a Tesla Cybertruck for five days, with unlimited mileage. Collection was self check-in: the owner unlocked the car remotely, the key was inside, and we drove away without meeting anybody. Additional drivers cost nothing as long as they are registered and approved in the app beforehand, which takes a few minutes and has to be done before you travel. The car came with the battery at about eighty per cent and had to go back the same way.
Two things I would tell anyone considering it. The first: the Cybertruck is a spectacle. In a red desert it looks like something that landed rather than something that drove in, and people stop to photograph it in car parks. The second: charging needs planning, but far less than we feared. Tesla's network turned out to be easy to manage even in the emptiest stretches — the car routes you to the chargers by itself, and even between Page, Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, where there is very little of anything, it was never a problem.
The Valley of Fire: the surprise of the whole trip
About an hour north-east of Las Vegas, before Utah and before any of the famous names, there is a state park that almost nobody outside Nevada talks about. We stopped expecting a break from the driving. We left three hours later, genuinely stunned.
The Valley of Fire is Nevada's oldest state park, and the name is literal: the sandstone is a red so saturated that in the low winter sun it looks lit from inside. The scenic road runs through the middle of it, and every few hundred metres there is a reason to stop — an arch, a wall of striped rock, a slot you can walk into.
At Atlatl Rock there are petroglyphs carved into the stone more than two thousand years ago, reachable by a metal staircase. Elsewhere the rock is layered in cream and orange and pink like something poured rather than eroded. And because it is a state park rather than a national one, it is quiet: we passed a handful of cars all morning.
If you are driving from Las Vegas towards Zion, the detour costs you an hour of road and gives you back an entire landscape. I would not skip it for anything.
- Las Vegas to the Valley of Fire: about 80 km, an hour on the I-15
- Valley of Fire to Springdale, at the gates of Zion: about 180 km
- Entrance is per vehicle and payable at the gate; the scenic road is short and worth driving twice
Springdale, and why one night there is not enough
We slept at the Cliffrose in Springdale, the town that sits directly at the entrance to Zion, on the river. Of all the places we stayed on this trip it is the one I would go back to first — and the one where I would add a night.
Springdale is genuinely beautiful. It is a single street with the canyon walls standing over it, close enough that you can watch the light move down them from the hotel. Staying there rather than an hour away changes the day completely: you are inside the park within minutes, and in winter, when the free shuttle is not running on the full schedule, that matters even more.
Observation Point: the walk we will not forget
We had two names on the list for Zion and we chose the harder one, and I am glad we did. Observation Point sits on the rim more than six hundred metres above the canyon floor, higher than Angels Landing and looking straight down it.
One thing to know before you plan it: the classic route from the canyon floor, up from Weeping Rock, has been closed since a rockfall in August 2019 and has not reopened. The way in now is the East Mesa Trail, which starts above the canyon and comes at the viewpoint from behind — about eleven kilometres round trip with barely two hundred metres of climbing, through ponderosa pines, almost flat until the very end. In winter the last stretch of dirt road to the trailhead is not cleared of snow, so check it before you commit.
We walked for over an hour through quiet woods with no view at all and no idea what was coming. We did not meet a single other person. And then the trees stop, the ground ends, and the whole of Zion Canyon opens up underneath you at once.
I have looked at a lot of landscapes and I am not easily silenced by one. That view silenced us. Angels Landing is below you, the river is a thread, the walls go on in both directions, and there was nobody there but us. It is the thing from this trip I would go back for tomorrow.
A pattern that repeated all week, and which is worth carrying with you: the places you have to walk to are the places you get to yourself. The ones you can reach from the car park are full. It is that simple, and it is true everywhere from here to the Grand Canyon.
In short
- Las Vegas → Valley of Fire → Springdale: about 260 km
- Two nights in Las Vegas at the Venetian, one night in Springdale at the Cliffrose
- Valley of Fire: the biggest surprise of the trip, an hour from the Strip
- Observation Point via the East Mesa Trail: about 11 km round trip, roughly 200 m of ascent
- Book the car on Turo before you fly, and register the second driver at the same time
Part two picks up on the road east, towards Page: Lower Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and a horse ride through Monument Valley that turned out to be the best thing we did all week.
