Taking a breather from Las Vegas to visit Grand Canyon National Park’s South Rim in late January. The drive took us around 4.5 hours.

The usual route takes you right by Hoover Dam, but we decided not to stop for the sake of time. There was very important partying to do that night, and responsibility is our middle name.

The Grand Canyon National Park Visitor Center is about 270 miles from Las Vegas. We grabbed a rental car around 8:30am and were back in Sin City by 10:30pm. As East Coasters, we found the drive through the desert to be pretty fun and interesting, so it was worth the long day of driving.

Due to our time constraints, we weren’t able to get to in depth with our trail choices, so we stuck to the Rim Trail, which follows along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, rather than descending into the depths of the canyon. It was also quite stormy and icy that day, which made for great rainbows, but slippery conditions. It also made for A LOT of wind noise, which unfortunately made cleaning up the audio on this video a bit of a challenge. Luckily, there were some very unique views to make up for it!

The large guard railed area with the abundance of rainbows was at lookout called Mather Point, a short walk from the Visitor Center – hence the higher concentration of tourists. Once we walked a bit further, it cleared out pretty quickly. I imagine the colder January weather had a bit to do with that too. The long winding trail seen at the end of the trail is the Bright Angel Trail.