Indeed there are.
The closest, least expensive, and most popular bus trip that departs and returns to Las Vegas on the same day goes to Hoover Dam. Representative of the many tour companies that do this 90-mile roundtrip is the aptly named Hoover Dam Tour Company, which leaves from the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood (pick-up from and drop-off at individual hotels is free, but add an hour to the round-trip). The five-hour tour costs $60 per person and you have a full two hours at the dam, includng the Hoover Dam Discovery Tour, with access to get into the Hoover Dam visitors center, museum, theater, exhibit rooms, generator room, and observation deck. The return trip stops at Ethel M’s Chocolate Factory and Botanical Gardens.
For $92, you can combine the bus tour with a boat ride on Lake Mead on the Desert Princess (7.5 hours total), though the sternwheeler doesn’t run this year from December 14 through January 31.
And for $150, you can take a 30-minute float trip below the dam on a large raft (five hours total).
Another bus day trip you can take out of Las Vegas is 90 miles south to the Colorado River town of Laughlin. All Las Vegas Tours’ trip is representative: It leaves at 8:30 a.m., you have six hours on your own in Laughlin, and it returns at 6 p.m. The whole trip costs $7.50.
However, with just a little online shopping, you can find coupons for Laughlin tours that not only waive the fee, but are also good for a free buffet lunch. Destinationcoupons.com is one such website where you can find a free trip to Laughlin; others pop up all the time.
Keep in mind that once you get to Laughlin, you’re on your own. The Laughlin Strip is long. Silver Rider buses ply the Strip and taxi boats run up and down the river; plan on catching one or the other, or taking a cab, to avoid a death march from the Riverside to Harrah’s, a distance of nearly two miles along South Casino Drive, without the major treks in and out of the casinos.
It’s a long 12- to 14-hour roundtrip, but you can go to and from the Grand Canyon on a bus in one day. Grand Canyon Tour Company’s tours are representative. On the one-day South Rim tour, you stop briefly at Hoover Dam and Kingman, Ariz., then have a buffet lunch at the historic Grand Canyon Railway in Williams, Arizona. At the South Rim, you pause at several lookouts and at Bright Angel Lodge, amidst other hotels, plus gift shops and eateries. Regularly, this tour is $179 per person, but specials are usually available; when we looked, they were charging $85 for one and $169 for two.
There are also 10- to 11-hour West Rim tours that include the canyon, Skywalk, and other attractions and retail for $225, but on special start at $140.
You can also take an 11-hour-or-so day trip to Death Valley. Las Vegas Grand Canyon Tours has a trip that leaves at 7 a.m. (with hotel pick-up up to an hour earlier) and offers a continental breakfast in Beatty, a 90-minute tour of Scotty’s Castle, then a drive through the park, including stops at Ubehebe Crater, Furnace Creek Ranch Museum, and the otherworldly Badwater Basin, the lowest spot in North America (282 feet below sea level). This tour is $199 per person, but you can probably do better with a little shopping around.
There are also a number of desert adventure tours, but these are off-road trips on ATVs, dune buggies, and the like, not the luxury motorcoaches you take on the above trips.
And if you’re willing to take a two-day trip, you can spend the night in Death Valley and Grand Canyon, and continue on to Zion and Bryce canyons, both national parks in southwestern Utah.
