Tan sandstone turns orange at dusk on the canyon wall above a campsite in Zion, where a rig sits backed into its pad with the awning out and the kids come up from the river wet to the knees. That night is the first of Nevada's best-known motorhome week, a loop that climbs the red-rock road out of the canyon to the hoodoos at Bryce, then heads south into Arizona for a morning on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Closer to home, the same rigs spend whole weeks parked on Lake Mead with the air conditioning running, or cross the state on US-50, the Loneliest Road, to camp under Wheeler Peak at Great Basin.
Zion, Bryce and the South Rim from Las Vegas
The usual week out of Las Vegas gives Zion two nights, Bryce one or two and the South Rim two, with the driving days between them long enough to be the day's plan on their own. Zion is the river and the canyon floor, Bryce is a cool morning on the rim trail above the orange spires, and the South Rim is sunset from the edge with the whole canyon going purple below.
Reserve the park nights before the rig. Watchman in Zion and the South Rim campgrounds fill early, and each posts its own length cap, which decides how long a motorhome the week can use. The Las Vegas RV page carries the pad-by-pad detail for Zion and the Grand Canyon.
The South Rim needs one extra piece of planning. Trailer Village, the park's hookup campground, is closed as of September 2026 under the park's water restrictions, and Mather Campground is dry camping. That moves the hookup night outside the gate to Tusayan or down the road to Williams, and putting it right after Mather gets the tanks back to empty before the long drive.
From the South Rim the loop heads home west, crossing the Colorado on the bridge beside Hoover Dam, with a last night on Lake Mead if the week allows. The other shape is a one-way, south to Phoenix from the South Rim or east from Bryce toward Denver. Cruise America lists Las Vegas to Phoenix and a Los Angeles to Denver route through Zion among its one-way itineraries, and El Monte RV books one-ways from its Las Vegas branch.
Lake Mead's RV villages, Boulder Beach to Temple Bar
From a lake-view pad at Boulder Beach, Lake Mead is a sheet of hard blue water under bare tan desert slopes, close enough to Las Vegas that a grocery run is an easy errand. A family of six can leave the rig where it is all week, with mornings in the water off the beach, afternoons under the awning and evenings watching the far shore turn pink.
Summer on the lake runs hot enough that the air conditioner works through the night, which makes hookups the thing to book. Lake Mead RV Village at Boulder Beach has 115 sites, many of them pull-through and all with power, water and sewer. As of September 2026 its lake-view sites book online and the pull-throughs by phone, and it makes an easy first or last night on the Grand Circle.
Echo Bay and Temple Bar, farther out along the lake, are two of the other RV villages on Lake Mead, and Lake Mohave to the south adds three more. The Park Service campgrounds on the lake have dump stations and no hookups, which suits a spring or fall week better than July. The Las Vegas RV page covers the rest of the lake and the desert around it.
Great Basin and Wheeler Peak, out on US-50
At the eastern end of US-50, near the Utah line, the week settles into one campground under Wheeler Peak and a day up the mountain. The Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive climbs in switchbacks through aspen toward the bristlecone pines, some of the oldest trees on earth, and the view back down runs across the whole valley the road just crossed.
The base for a motorhome is Lower Lehman Creek, which takes rigs up to 40 feet and has six pull-through sites. Upper Lehman also allows 40 feet, with RVs kept off its upper loop, and Baker Creek takes rigs to 50 feet. The scenic drive is the tighter limit, because vehicles and trailers over 24 feet stop at Upper Lehman Creek around mile marker 3, so the motorhome stays at camp and Wheeler Peak Campground at the top is out of reach for most rentals.
The upper drive closes at Upper Lehman once winter arrives and usually opens again by Memorial Day. Two people who want to sleep up high at Wheeler Peak, or carry on north to the Ruby Mountains, will fit better in a smaller rig from the Nevada campervan page.
Follow US-50 west instead and it runs out at Lake Tahoe, where Nevada Beach camps a rig in the pines behind a broad sand beach on the Nevada shore. Length caps there are set pad by pad on Recreation.gov, so reserve the site before the rig. The longer Tahoe week belongs to the California side of the lake.
Burning Man week, out on the Black Rock playa at the end of summer, is a different trip entirely, a week of alkali dust with the rig running on its own tanks and power. It competes with Tahoe and Great Basin for the same rigs on the same dates, so start with the Burning Man RV page if your week overlaps it.