Day Trips from Las Vegas by Bus (No Car Needed)
by Wanderu
Las Vegas is a car city that happens to sit in the middle of a busy bus map. Five bus companies sold Los Angeles tickets on Wanderu in the past year. Salt Lake Express links southern Utah, Tufesa and FlixBus cover Arizona, and a $5 public bus now runs from St. George to the edge of Zion.
None of these 16 trips needs a rental car; the quick ones come first. Wanderu’s routes carry live fares, and RTC’s are on rtcsnv.com. The famous ones that still need a tour or a car are at the end.
We first wrote this page in 2018, promising nine cities and listing seven. Hollywood and North Hollywood haven’t sold a ticket on Wanderu since January 2020 and May 2019, Pahrump hasn’t since June 2024, and Long Beach sold exactly one in the past year. Los Angeles, Anaheim and Riverside are still here, at several times the 2018 fares. The list now follows the tickets people buy.
In the past year Wanderu booked 1,877 tickets out of Las Vegas. On most of the main corridors the typical ticket ran from about $43 to Barstow up to $75 to Phoenix. FlixBus was the cheapest company on almost every shared corridor except Los Angeles itself, and on the big corridors booking early bought almost nothing.
| Destination | Travel time | From |
|---|---|---|
| Boulder City, NV | Local bus with a transfer, well over an hour (check RTC’s timetable) | RTC Southern Nevada |
| Mesquite, NV | About 1 hour 25 minutes by bus | $32 Bus |
| Kingman, AZ | About 2 hours by bus | $19 Bus |
| St. George, UT | About 2 hours 20 minutes by bus | $41 Salt Lake Express |
| Barstow, CA | About 2 and a half hours by bus | $25 Bus |
| Hesperia and Victorville, CA | About 3 hours to Hesperia, 3 hours 45 minutes to Victorville | $50 Bus to Hesperia$27 Bus to Victorville |
| Cedar City, UT | About 3 hours 25 minutes by bus | $46 Salt Lake Express |
| San Bernardino, Riverside and Ontario, CA | About 4 hours by bus | $30 Bus to San Bernardino$30 Bus to Riverside$50 Bus to Ontario |
| Anaheim, CA | About 4 hours 15 minutes by bus | $34 Bus |
| Los Angeles, CA | About 4 to 5 hours by bus (FlixBus lists 4 hours 5 minutes; the Wanderu booking median is 4 hours 50 minutes) | $34 Bus |
| Phoenix and Tempe, AZ | About 5 and a half hours to Phoenix, closer to 7 to Tempe | $33 Bus to Phoenix$33 FlixBus to Tempe |
| Zion National Park via St. George | About 4 to 5 hours each way, with the transfer in St. George (Zion.travel’s estimate) | $41 Salt Lake Express+$5 SunTran from St. George |
| Bakersfield and Fresno, CA | About 6 hours 40 minutes to Bakersfield, 8 hours 50 minutes to Fresno | $41 Bus to Bakersfield$112 Amtrak to Fresno |
| San Diego, CA | About 7 hours by bus | $36 Bus |
| Tucson, AZ | About 7 and a half hours by bus | $46 Bus |
| Salt Lake City, UT | About 8 hours by bus | $110 Salt Lake Express |
Where the buses leave from
- There’s no single Las Vegas bus station. The downtown Greyhound terminal closed in 2021. FlixBus and Greyhound now list a spread of pickup points around the valley, from the Strip to the airport to the South Strip Transit Terminal.
- Read your ticket. Tufesa, Salt Lake Express and the shuttle companies use their own stops. The only address that matters is the one on your ticket, so check the bus company’s own stop list before you leave the hotel.
- Getting to the stop: RTC redrew its bus network on August 23, 2026, changing 35 of its 39 routes. The Maryland Parkway RED LINE runs every 12 minutes by day, seven days a week. It links the Bonneville Transit Center, the South Strip Transit Terminal and the airport, which reaches several of the intercity pickups in one ride.
- No train: Las Vegas has no Amtrak station. Amtrak is here as a Thruway bus, running since May 2021, that connects to Pacific Surfliner trains in Los Angeles by way of San Bernardino, Victorville and Barstow. Brightline West, the high-speed line to Rancho Cucamonga, is under construction, with service planned, as of September 2026, for late 2029: a headline, not an option.
Under three hours
Boulder City, NV
Local bus with a transfer, well over an hour (check RTC’s timetable)
- RTC Southern Nevada
Boulder City is the one trip here you do on the city bus. RTC’s network reaches the tidy company town built to house the dam workers in the 1930s. The historic downtown is walkable: the Hoover Dam Museum inside the Boulder Dam Hotel, the shops along Nevada Way, and a clean-living calm the Strip has never heard of.
What the bus doesn’t do is reach the dam. That sits a few miles past town on the Arizona line. There’s no scheduled bus down the access road that we can find, so the last stretch is a tour, a rideshare or a rental car.
Mesquite, NV
About 1 hour 25 minutes by bus
- Las Vegas to Mesquite busesfrom $32
Eighty miles up I-15 on the Arizona line, Mesquite is the closest stop anyone booked from Las Vegas on Wanderu last year. It’s casino resorts and a cluster of golf courses: a quieter, cheaper weekend than the Strip. Only a handful of tickets booked here in the past year, at a typical $48, so check the schedule before you count on it.
Kingman, AZ
About 2 hours by bus
- Las Vegas to Kingman busesfrom $19
Kingman is the Route 66 town that made it into the song. The Arizona Route 66 Museum sits in the old Powerhouse building, and a stretch of the Mother Road runs straight through downtown.
Tufesa carried most of last year’s Kingman tickets, in about two hours, at a typical $48. The cheapest ticket anyone bought out of Las Vegas on Wanderu in the past year? A $28 ticket to Kingman. (It was one ticket.)
St. George, UT
About 2 hours 20 minutes by bus
- Las Vegas to St. George busesfrom $41
Salt Lake Express had this corridor to itself last year. Every St. George ticket booked on Wanderu in the past year was theirs, typically about $53, and a quarter of them went for under $43. St. George is the sunny corner of Utah, with Snow Canyon State Park’s red-and-white sandstone a short drive from town.
It’s also where you change for SunTran’s $5 bus to Zion.
Barstow, CA
About 2 and a half hours by bus
- Las Vegas to Barstow busesfrom $25
Barstow had the cheapest typical ticket of the lot last year, about $43, and it’s a railroad and Route 66 town in the high desert. The Route 66 Mother Road Museum sits in the old Harvey House depot, and the outlet mall is beside the freeway. Calico Ghost Town, a preserved silver-mining camp, is a short cab or rideshare up the road.
FlixBus wrote most of the tickets here, and Amtrak’s Thruway bus stops here too on its Los Angeles run. At last year’s typical $43, a ticket and a ghost town make a decent day.
Three to six hours
Hesperia and Victorville, CA
About 3 hours to Hesperia, 3 hours 45 minutes to Victorville
- Las Vegas to Hesperia busesfrom $50
- Las Vegas to Victorville busesfrom $27
The High Desert towns are where the Los Angeles buses start filling up: 91 tickets between them last year, against Barstow’s 17. On last year’s bookings, Victorville was the cheap one, typically about $49, with FlixBus around $43; Hesperia ran close to the full LA fare.
The California Route 66 Museum sits in Victorville’s old downtown, and Amtrak’s Thruway bus calls here on its way to the Pacific Surfliner. When Brightline West opens, Hesperia gets a station and the Victor Valley station goes in next door in Apple Valley.
Cedar City, UT
About 3 hours 25 minutes by bus
- Las Vegas to Cedar City busesfrom $46
Cedar City is the Utah Shakespeare Festival town, with a summer-into-fall season of plays on the Southern Utah University campus. It’s also the closest bookable stop to Cedar Breaks National Monument.
Salt Lake Express runs it too; last year’s typical ticket was about $61. Only a handful of tickets a year book here from Las Vegas, which is the festival’s loss.
San Bernardino, Riverside and Ontario, CA
About 4 hours by bus
- Las Vegas to San Bernardino busesfrom $30
- Las Vegas to Riverside busesfrom $30
- Las Vegas to Ontario busesfrom $50
Riverside was on the 2018 list at $11; the typical ticket last year was about $55, with FlixBus the cheap company at around $50. The Mission Inn, a full city block of Spanish Revival hotel that has hosted presidents, is the reason to get off here. Its Festival of Lights turns the whole downtown into a display through the holidays.
San Bernardino is the practical stop, a Metrolink hub and another Amtrak Thruway connection, where FlixBus tickets ran around $47 last year. Ontario is Ontario Mills, the giant outlet mall, and it barely sold at all last year.
Anaheim, CA
About 4 hours 15 minutes by bus
- Las Vegas to Anaheim busesfrom $34
Disneyland, obviously, plus Angel Stadium and the Honda Center a mile apart. Most of last year’s Anaheim tickets went to LuxXpress’s shuttle vans, so the typical ticket ran about $91, and only a quarter went for under $78.
Los Angeles, CA
About 4 to 5 hours by bus (FlixBus lists 4 hours 5 minutes; the Wanderu booking median is 4 hours 50 minutes)
- Las Vegas to Los Angeles busesfrom $34
Los Angeles is the big one. Of the 1,877 tickets booked from Las Vegas on Wanderu in the past year, 881 went to Los Angeles. Five bus companies split them: Tufesa, Las Vegas Shuttles, FlixBus, LuxXpress and CoachRun.
FlixBus, which owns Greyhound, lists more than a dozen departures a day from the small hours to near midnight, and its lowest fares in the past year dipped under $40. The typical ticket across all five companies was about $58: CoachRun around $53, Tufesa $54, FlixBus $58, Las Vegas Shuttles $60, and LuxXpress, the upscale one, $83.
On the LA end the buses stop all over town rather than at one terminal, so read our guide to Los Angeles’s bus stations before you book. Once you’re there, where the bus goes from Los Angeles keeps the car-free streak going.
Phoenix and Tempe, AZ
About 5 and a half hours to Phoenix, closer to 7 to Tempe
- Las Vegas to Phoenix busesfrom $33
- Las Vegas to Tempe busesfrom $33
The second-biggest corridor out of Las Vegas, 192 tickets last year, and the clearest case for checking FlixBus. Tufesa carried most of it at a typical $75, FlixBus at about $46. Same road, thirty dollars apart last year.
FlixBus also sells Tempe directly for the ASU crowd; last year’s typical ticket was about $53. Phoenix rewards a real day: the Heard Museum for Native American art, the Desert Botanical Garden at sunset, and the murals of Roosevelt Row. Our Phoenix summer guide covers surviving the heat, which from May to September is the itinerary.
Make it a weekend
Everything here is six hours and up, or needs a transfer, so give it a night. Reno is bookable from Las Vegas too, but at 12 hours and up by bus we’re not calling that a weekend.
Zion National Park via St. George
About 4 to 5 hours each way, with the transfer in St. George (Zion.travel’s estimate)
- Las Vegas to St. George busesfrom $41
- SunTran from St. George+$5
The best car-free trip in the Southwest starts with Salt Lake Express to St. George (about 2 hours 20 minutes; last year’s typical ticket was $53). Then board SunTran’s Zion Route, the $5 public bus that started running in November 2024 from St. George through Hurricane and Virgin to Springdale. Its last stop is a short walk, or in season a free Springdale town shuttle ride, from the park’s pedestrian entrance, where Zion’s own free canyon shuttle takes over from spring through November.
Zion.travel puts the bus fares at $50 to $60 each way, plus the park’s per-person entrance fee at the gate, against a $95 direct tour shuttle. SunTran runs Monday through Saturday and not on Sunday, so come back down to St. George on Saturday night if your return bus is Sunday morning.
Bakersfield and Fresno, CA
About 6 hours 40 minutes to Bakersfield, 8 hours 50 minutes to Fresno
- Las Vegas to Bakersfield busesfrom $41
- Las Vegas to Fresno trainsfrom $112
Amtrak’s Central Valley routing: last year a Thruway bus to Bakersfield typically ran about $94, then the train north to Fresno about $125 all in. It wasn’t cheap and it isn’t quick.
In the warmer months, though, it’s the way into Yosemite without a car: YARTS runs a seasonal bus from Fresno into the park. The year-round YARTS service leaves from Merced instead. Bakersfield earns its own stop with the family-style Basque dinners the town is known for.
San Diego, CA
About 7 hours by bus
- Las Vegas to San Diego busesfrom $36
Three bus companies sold it last year, and typical fares spread wide: FlixBus about $59, Las Vegas Shuttles $94, Tufesa $97. So last year’s $93 typical ticket hid a much cheaper ticket for anyone who shopped. Seven hours is a long day, which is why this is a weekend.
Balboa Park’s museums, the beaches from Ocean Beach to La Jolla, and a downtown you can do on foot and the trolley. Our list of free things to do in San Diego fills out the trip.
Tucson, AZ
About 7 and a half hours by bus
- Las Vegas to Tucson busesfrom $46
Tufesa and FlixBus both run it; last year’s typical ticket was about $84, with Tufesa around $86 and FlixBus around $74. Tucson is Saguaro National Park on both sides of the city and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
It’s also the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in the United States, which is a fancy way of saying eat the Sonoran hot dog. Give it two nights; the bus alone takes most of a day each way.
Salt Lake City, UT
About 8 hours by bus
- Las Vegas to Salt Lake City busesfrom $110
Salt Lake City is the long haul on Salt Lake Express, and the priciest bus here, at a typical $129 on last year’s bookings. Fair, for eight hours and 420 miles.
Temple Square, the Natural History Museum of Utah, and in winter the ski resorts up Little and Big Cottonwood canyons, which the local bus system reaches. Salt Lake Express also sells Provo and Spanish Fork from Las Vegas, $107 to $115.
The other Southern California stops
The Los Angeles buses, mostly Tufesa and Las Vegas Shuttles, also stop in a ring of suburbs. They save a transfer if that’s where you’re going. Typical tickets ran $54 to $64 in the past year.
- Huntington Park, CAfrom $50
- El Monte, CAfrom $42
- Pomona, CAfrom $60
- Claremont, CAfrom $31
- Rancho Cucamonga, CAfrom $60
- Fontana, CAfrom $60
- Bloomington, CAfrom $50
The famous ones that need a tour or a car
None of these four has a regular bus from Las Vegas, so no fares and no links here. Plan on a tour bus or a rental car.
Grand Canyon
No regular bus runs from Las Vegas to either rim. The one direct option is a one-way seat on National Park Express’s tour coach to the South Rim, which Greyhound and FlixBus resell. It leaves once a day and takes about eight and a half hours with stops along the way, so plan to stay over.
From Flagstaff, one of the stops Wanderu sells, Groome Transportation runs a reservation-only shuttle into Grand Canyon Village several times a day. Greyhound also stops in Williams, 60 miles from the South Rim, where the Grand Canyon Railway and Groome’s shuttle head up to the rim. For a day, it’s a tour or a car, and the West Rim, with the Skywalk, is the one within day-trip range.
Death Valley
About two hours west by car, with nothing scheduled in between. Tour companies run full-day trips; nobody sells a bus ticket to Furnace Creek. Go between November and March unless you want to find out how it got the name.
Valley of Fire
Nevada’s oldest state park, about an hour northeast, and the best red-rock scenery within a day of the Strip. Car or tour only.
Red Rock Canyon
Seventeen miles west of the Strip with a 13-mile scenic loop, and no scheduled bus to the entrance. Rent a car, book a tour, or ride a bike, which people really do.
How to pay less (what 1,877 tickets say)
We looked at every ticket booked from Las Vegas on Wanderu between September 2025 and September 2026. Four things held up:
- Plan on $50 to $75. The typical ticket ran from about $43 (Barstow) to $75 (Phoenix) on most of the main corridors, and only about one ticket in eight came in under $50.
- Check FlixBus first on any shared road. It was the cheapest company to Phoenix, Victorville, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego, sometimes by $30 a ticket. Los Angeles is the exception, where Tufesa and CoachRun typically came in under FlixBus (details under Los Angeles). Tufesa and Las Vegas Shuttles win on stops and volume, not price.
- Don’t expect a reward for planning. Los Angeles tickets bought on the day or the day before ran $59; two weeks out, about $54. Phoenix showed no consistent pattern, and 68 percent of LA tickets were bought within a day of departure anyway. Book when you know, not months ahead.
- December and January were the pricey months on the LA run last year, about $60 and $59 against about $55 in March and April, roughly 10 percent over the spring low. Phoenix crept up about 7 percent through the year.
For the version of this advice that works from any city, read our guide to finding the cheapest tickets.
Frequently asked questions
What day trips from Las Vegas can you do without a car?
More than you’d think: scheduled buses reach Boulder City (RTC), Mesquite, Kingman on Route 66, St. George, Barstow, the High Desert towns, Anaheim, Los Angeles and Phoenix in under six hours. With a night away: San Diego, Tucson, Salt Lake City and, via St. George and the $5 SunTran bus, Zion National Park. Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Valley of Fire and Red Rock Canyon have no regular bus and need a tour or a rental car.
What is about an hour from Las Vegas by bus?
The closest stop anyone booked on Wanderu last year is Mesquite, about 1 hour 25 minutes up I-15, with casinos and golf. Boulder City is reachable on RTC’s Route 221, a local bus with a transfer, so budget well over an hour (and the dam itself is beyond the last stop).
What places are only 2 hours from Las Vegas?
Three real ones by bus, with typical tickets of $43 to $53 in the past year. Kingman, Arizona, is about 2 hours out, for the Route 66 museum and the Mother Road downtown. Barstow, California, is about 2 and a half, for the Harvey House museum and Calico Ghost Town. St. George, Utah, is about 2 hours 20 minutes on Salt Lake Express, for Snow Canyon and the connection into Zion.
Can you take a bus from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon?
Only on a tour operator’s coach: National Park Express sells one-way seats from the Strip to the South Rim, once a day, about eight and a half hours with stops. The nearest stops Wanderu sells, Kingman and Flagstaff, are a long way from the rim; from Flagstaff, Groome runs a reservation-only shuttle into Grand Canyon Village. Either way you’ll spend the night, so for a day it’s a tour or a rental car.
Is there a bus from Las Vegas to Hoover Dam?
Not to the dam itself, though RTC’s Route 221 reaches Boulder City, the town built for the dam workers, and that’s a cheap day out on its own. We can’t find a scheduled bus down the access road to the dam, a few miles past town, so the last stretch is a tour, a rideshare or a car. Check rtcsnv.com for the current Boulder City route; RTC redrew its network in August 2026.
What are some good 3-day trips from Las Vegas by bus?
Four, all bookable on Wanderu except the $5 SunTran leg, which you pay on the bus. Zion via St. George and the SunTran Zion Route: Zion.travel puts it at four to five hours each way and $50 to $60 in bus fares, plus the park’s per-person entrance fee. San Diego is seven hours (FlixBus typically ran about $59), Salt Lake City eight on Salt Lake Express, and Tucson seven and a half, for Saguaro National Park on both sides of town.
The “from” prices on this page refresh from Wanderu’s route data: each is the cheapest fare recently available on that route, the same figure its route page shows. “Typical” fares are Wanderu bookings from Las Vegas, September 2025 to September 2026, per ticket, the full price paid; ticket counts are bookings, and a booking can cover more than one seat. Card travel times are the median trip length of those bookings unless the card names an operator or another source. The SunTran fare is the operator’s published fare as of September 2026; RTC fares are on rtcsnv.com.
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