School me on Vegas Living

All:

I may need to relocate to Las Vegas for work. I was wondering what folks thought of the town. I could care less about the casinos...

More importantly, it looks like it's within a day trip to a bunch of National Parks. How is the scenery. Most of the trails I've seen from posted pics seem to be pretty difficult. Our there any stocker trails out there? I really enjoy camping and outdoor stuff. The idea of cool stuff near by is appealing, but nothing else about Vegas seems to grab me.

FYI, I've only been living in AZ for about 6 months. I'm getting used to AZ, but I also really miss Colorado...

Edit: If this needs to go in the intermountain chapter, please move it. I searched for threads about Vegas and most were from the SOCAL chapter...

Talk to Andy. He moved there about 6 months ago.

PM sent. Thanks!

been in the vegas area for 9 yrs. live in henderson (less expensive/larger homes & apts). Lake Mead is only 5 miles from my house. lots of ghost towns in southern half of state, plus within 3/4 hrs in so calif.

There's plenty of stock friendly trails around the area. The Nevada Backroaders focuses on trails that are primarily scenic. Lots of runs out to ghost towns and such.

You've got to love the desert out here. There's not much else close by other than Mount Charleston. Even Lake Mead is situated in the desert.

Zion and Bryce National parks are close by in Utah... only 2 hours away.

Thanks guys. The desert is growing on me. I'll be honest though, most of my weekends in AZ have been spent up north near Sedona or Flagstaff. A two hour trip isn't a big deal in my mind. I've driven at least 1.5 hours to somewhere every availible weekend for the last 5 years. A lot of the really fun stuff in Colorado is usually (not always) an hour or two from Denver.

How long does it take to get to some other places like:

Lake Tahoe,
Yosemite
Grand Canyon
Moab

I'm talking about real world driving (whatever that may be), not mapquest calculations...

edit: I forgot to mention Andy, I really like the purple stuff on your jeep. I normally don't like anything purple on any vehicle, but it looks pretty neat on your XJ. I have a white '99. I don't think I'll be adding any bright colors to it though...

Markos said:

How long does it take to get to some other places like:

Click to expand...

Lake Tahoe... 8-10 hours
Yosemite... 6-8 hours
Grand Canyon 2-3 hours
Moab... 7 hours

edit: I forgot to mention Andy, I really like the purple stuff on your jeep. I normally don't like anything purple on any vehicle, but it looks pretty neat on your XJ.

Click to expand...

Thanks. Purple is my wife's favorite color. Everybody and their borother has a white XJ with black bumpers. I just wanted to have something different.

If you like the outdoors, Las Vegas is one of the best, most overlooked cities. Within 4hrs of town you've got the largest national forest and the largest wild life refugee in the continental US, plus the least visited, least crowded national park in the country (great basin.) We've got nothing but open space. You do have to like driving if you want to enjoy it though, There's a lot around Las Vegas but even more as you head into Northern Nevada, Utah and Az.

Matt

Well I like driving and love the outdoors. I didn't realize how far it was to Tahoe and Yosemite. Everything else is comparible to Phoenix in terms of drive time.

Thanks for the info!

Death Valley is only a couple hours away to the north. Lots of ghost towns & beautiful scenery. There aren't too many extreme trails, but you can find some challenging ones, especially in the Panamint Mountains to the west.