Rough guide. Las Vegas Direction
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PLACES
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Contents Places
nearly as wide as it is tall. It was
completed in 1935, as the fi rst
step in the Bureau of Reclama-
tion program that culminated in
the Glen Canyon Dam at the far
end of the Grand Canyon, and
the creation of Lake Powell. In
addition to creating Lake Mead,
Hoover Dam is likely respon-
sible for modern Las Vegas’s
very existence, not so much as
a source of energy – only four
percent of Las Vegas’s electricity
comes from hydroelectric power
– but because the workers who
built it triggered the city’s fi rst
gambling-fueled boom.
Visits to Hoover Dam have
been restricted since the 9/11
attacks convinced the authorities
that it was a potential terrorist
target. In addition, while private
vehicles are unaffected, com-
mercial traffi c is no longer
permitted to cross the dam.
If you’re happy to get just a
general view of the scale of the
thing, drive across the top of the
dam into Arizona, and squeeze
into one of the parking lots
on the far side. But for a good
close-up view, pay $5 to get
into the huge parking lot on the
Nevada side of the river (daily
8am–6pm). From here you can
walk down to the dam itself and
stroll along the top of it, looking
towards Lake Mead from one
sidewalk and then peering down
the awesome drop to the river
from the other. A splendid Deco
monument on the Nevada
side commemorates the dam’s
opening by Franklin Roosevelt
in 1935. At the nearby Hoover
Dam Visitor Center (daily:
April–Sept 8.30am–5.45pm;
Oct–March 9.15am–4.15pm;
T
293-1824,
W
www.usbr.gov/
lc/hooverdam; $10) you can
inspect displays on the dam’s
history and construction, and
join a “Discovery Tour,” taking
an elevator ride down to see
the giant turbine room at the
bottom. However, as the former
“hard-hat” tours, which allowed
visitors to step out into the
open air down at the base of the
dam, have been discontinued,
the admission price may seem a
bit steep.
HOOVER DAM
Day trips
PLACES
150
Contents Places
Valley Of Fire
50 miles northeast of Las Vegas, I-15
to Hwy-169. While Red Rock
Canyon certainly makes a tasty
appetizer, to experience the
true scale and splendor of the
Southwestern deserts, a trip to
the Valley of Fire is necessary. Its
multicolored, strangely eroded
rocks are the solidifi ed remains
of sand dunes laid down at
the time of the dinosaurs, 150
million years ago. If they seem
familiar, you may have seen
them in any number of movies
and TV shows, from One Million
Years BC to Star Trek – The Next
Generation.
Hwy-169 cuts away east from
I-15, cresting the aptly named
Muddy Mountains to enter
Valley of Fire State Park
(
W www.parks.nv.gov/vf.htm;
$6 per-vehicle entrance fee). A
huge panorama opens up ahead,
stretching down toward Lake
Mead, but the road has to pick
its way gingerly down, threading
between abrupt, jagged out-
crops. After passing the entrance
station, you soon come to the
fi rst of the big red rocks, the
ridged, bulbous Beehives.
A little further on, a 5.5-mile
spur road past the park’s visitor
center (daily 8.30am–4.30pm;
T 702/397-2088) leads through
a wonderland of misshapen
stone monstrosities, worn
smooth by millennia of wind
and rain and striped in a broad
palate of colors. Cream, yellow,
gold, pink, and purple strata are
interspersed among the lurid,
omnipresent red. Many hikers
set off walking when the road
dead-ends at the White Domes,
but that entails plowing through
thick sand drifts, and there’s
a better trail earlier on. The
enjoyable and easy Mouse’s
Tank trail (1 mile round-trip)
starts less than a mile north of
the visitor center and follows a
sandy wash through Petroglyph
Canyon. The trail stops when
the ground suddenly drops away
at the far end of the canyon,
where run-off after desert
storms has cut deep channels
into the rock. Scrambling up
the slopes adjacent to the edge
HIKING IN THE VALLEY OF FIRE
Day trips
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enables you to peer down into
Mouse’s Tank, a natural reservoir
that was the hideout of Mouse,
a fugitive Paiute Indian, during
the 1890s.
Alongside Hwy-169, about
three miles east of the visitor
center, is Elephant Rock,
one of the most photographed
features of the Valley of Fire.
Reached via a short but steep
trail from the parking lot at
the park’s east entrance, it does
indeed bear an amazing resem-
blance to a petrifi ed pachyderm,
dipping its trunk into the hill-
side.
A mile east outside the Valley
of Fire State Park, Hwy-169
meets Hwy-167, Northshore
Drive, which circles back south
toward Las Vegas, a fi fty-mile
drive that takes you through
some utterly stunning wilder-
ness. Desolate and forbidding
sandstone mountains soar in
your path, the road dwindling
to a thin gray streak dwarfed
beneath stark serrated cliffs. Its
name, however, referring to its
position by Lake Mead, is mis-
leading – you almost never see
the lake itself, which remains on
the far side of a high ridge.
The Lost City Museum
Hwy-169, Overton T 702/397-2193,
W www.comnett.net/~kolson. Daily
8.30am–4.30pm. $2. Overton’s
intriguing Lost City Museum
preserves the largest Nevada
settlement of the Ancestral
Puebloans, who inhabited the
Colorado Plateau between
around 300 BC and 1150 AD.
The so-called “Lost City” was
in fact more of an elongated
village. Stretching for around
thirty miles along the Moapa
Valley, and originally known
to archeologists as the Pueblo
Grande de Nevada, its ruins
were partly submerged by the
creation of Lake Mead in the
1930s. At that time, the fi nest
artifacts from the site were gath-
ered into this museum, which
was given a catchy name in the
hope of making it easier to raise
funds.
Displays at the museum are
still very much rooted in the
RED SANDSTONE ROCKS, VALLEY OF FIRE
Day trips
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1930s – techniques like painting
over a slab of genuine petro-
glyphs would appall modern
archeologists – but there’s
still plenty to fascinate casual
visitors. The whole structure
is designed in a mock-Pueblo
style, with a replica of a dig on a
genuine site inside, and there are
reconstructions of Pueblo build-
ings, also on their original sites,
in the garden outside.
The Grand Canyon
Whatever impression Las Vegas
tour companies may give you,
the Grand Canyon is nowhere
near the city. The canyon’s
South Rim – the headquarters
of the national park, the center
for tourist activity, and where
all those stunning photos are
taken – is 290 miles from
Las Vegas by road, while the
quieter but equally impressive
GRAND CANYON
Day trips
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North Rim is only a little
closer, along a far less traveled
route. Instead, most bus and
helicopter tours advertised
as visiting the canyon from
Las Vegas actually take you
only about 130 miles to the
so-called West Rim, a Colo-
rado River overlook on the
Hualapai Indian Reservation.
Although this is a dramatic and
isolated desert viewpoint in its
own right, it’s simply not on
the same scale as the real thing.
Grand Canyon tours
It is just possible, if not especially recommended, to take a bus to the South
Rim and back in a day; Grayline (T 702/384-1234, Wwww.grayline.com)
does a fourteen-hour round-trip for $150, and also a nine-hour trip to the
West Rim for $140, while the Missing Link Tours (T 800/209-8586, W www
.tmltours.com) visits the West Rim for $119, with overnight camping trips
$189.
The variety of Grand Canyon
aerial tours – a much more practical, if more
expensive, way to do the trip – on offer is endless. All include an aerial view of
Hoover Dam, which lies conveniently en route, as well as a shuttle service to
and from your hotel, and cost roughly $100–500. Look for advertisements in
free local magazines that feature two-for-one deals, or check the operators’
websites for specials.
Air Vegas Airlines
T 702/736-3599 or 800/255-7474, W www.airvegas
.com. Helicopter tours of the West Rim from $229, or an eight-hour trip to the
South Rim, including a bus tour, for $250.
Heli USA
T 702/736-8787 or 800/359-8727, W www.heliusa.com. Helicop-
ter fl ights from Las Vegas to a remote West Rim ranch, where you can go
horse riding or stay the night in a log cabin. Prices start from around $300.
Papillon Helicopters
T 702/736-7243 or 888/635-7272, W www.papillon
.com. A huge range of helicopter tours, including landing beside the river at
the West Rim for $349, and either riding in a bus ($245) or a fi xed-wing plane
($329) to the South Rim and taking a helicopter tour there.
Scenic Airlines
T 702/638-3200 or 800/634-6801, W www.scenic.com.
Fixed-wing air tours, including West Rim without a landing for $109, or land-
ing at the South Rim for $224, with an optional bus tour for another $20.
Day trips
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Contents Places
Accommodation
Contents Accommodation
Accommodation
Contents Accommodation
Contents Accommodation
Las Vegas is the hotel capital of
the planet, holding fourteen of
the world’s twenty largest hotels,
and all of the US top ten. Almost
all of Vegas’s 135,000 rooms
are in hotels attached to large
casinos, with the vast majority
in the giant properties lined up
along the Strip, where at least
fifteen casinos boast more than
three thousand rooms apiece.
Where you stay makes a huge
difference. It can take half an hour
to walk to the Strip from a room
in the MGM Grand or Caesars
Palace, so choose a hotel where
you’ll be happy to spend time.
The most convenient locations
are unquestionably the southern
end of the Strip, around Tropi-
cana Avenue, and the Central
Strip area near Flamingo Avenue.
Downtown hotels are usually
much less glamorous, while those
located well off the Strip can be
OK but are only worth consider-
ing if you don’t mind driving.
Whatever you may have
heard, Las Vegas hotels no
longer offer incredibly cheap
deals, though prices are roughly
thirty percent lower than you
might pay for similar accom-
modation in other US cities.
It’s true that serious gamblers
can get free accommodation,
but you have first to establish
a track record of gambling
thousands of dollars – a strange
definition of “free.”
Hotel rooms in Las Vegas tend
to be much the same as in any
generic American chain, with
most casinos making only token
efforts to match rooms to their
overall “themes.”
No conventional motels now
survive on the Strip, though
plenty are scattered elsewhere
in the city. Since rates at these
places tend to be no great savings,
the reviews below concentrate
on accommodation at the major
Strip and downtown casinos
– each of which is described in
detail in earlier chapters – with
just a few exceptional properties
and budget options elsewhere.
Hotels
Reservations and prices
Besides the usual travel websites, when looking for a hotel room you can try
the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, which offers an availability
and reservations service (
T 877/847-4858). You can also try the Las Vegas
Hotel Reservation Center (
T 702/873-8041 or 800/394-7750, W www
.lasvegashotel.com).
Precise room rates vary widely; stay in the same room for a week, and you’ll
likely pay a different rate each night. You may find discounts online, or simply by
saying you’re attending a convention, or that you belong to the AAA or the British
AA. However, the only surefire way to get a cut-price room is to visit during the
week rather than the weekend. Rates everywhere rise enormously on Friday or
Saturday, $100 or more extra per night in the big-name casinos. Many hotels
only take reservations covering Friday and Saturday, and won’t accept Saturday
arrivals.
Hotel rates in this chapter refer to the approximate cost of a double room
throughout most of the year. Note that all rates shown are subject to an addi-
tional room tax, nine percent on the Strip, and eleven percent downtown.
ACCOMMODATION
Hotels
157
ACCOMMODATION
Contents Accommodation
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T
McCarran
Airport
Main
Airport
Terminal
Thomas and
Mack Center
University
of Nevada,
Las Vegas
Mandalay
Bay
Luxor
Excalibur
The
Tropicana
The
MGM
Grand
The Monte
Carlo
New York-
New York
Paris
The
Aladdin
Bally’s
Bellagio
Caesars
Palace
The
Mirage
The
Venetian
TI
(Treasure
Island)
Fashion
Show
Mall
Circus
Circus
The
Stardust
The
Riviera
The
Sahara
The
Stratosphere
Wynn Las
Vegas
The New
Frontier
The
Barbary
Coast
The
Flamingo
The Imperial
Palace
Harrah’s
monorail
Las Vegas M
onorail
Boulevard
Mall
Las Vegas
Hilton
Las Vegas
Convention
Center
The Rio
Palace
Station
Las Vegas
Country
Club
15
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0 1 mile
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HOSTELS
Las Vegas
USA Hostels
Sin City Hostel
1
2
The Aladdin
Bally’s
Barbary Coast
Bellagio
Caesars Palace
Circus Circus
Excalibur
The Flamingo
Four Seasons
25
21
19
22
16
5
32
18
35
Hard Rock Hotel
Harrah’s
The Imperial Palace
Las Vegas Hilton
Luxor
Mandalay Bay
MGM Grand
The Mirage
Monte Carlo
Motel 6 - Tropicana
The New Frontier
New York-New York
The Palms
Paris
The Rio
The Riviera
The Sahara
The Stardust
26
14
15
7
33
34
28
13
27
The Stratosphere
Super 8
TI
The Tropicana
The Venetian
Wynn Las Vegas
30
9
29
20
23
17
6
4
8
3
24
11
31
12
10
HOTELS
Tunnel
Hotels
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