LA Southwest Road Trip: 2 Days
Two days out of LA is one trip, not a loop: Las Vegas, 270 miles up I-15, 4 to 4.5 hours each way, and nothing else realistically fits. Give the city itself two or three days first (our Los Angeles guide covers that), then use this version as the shortest honest Southwest add-on. Want more than one overnight? See 3 days through 7 days , or read the full LA to Vegas, Zion and Death Valley guide .
Book these before you go
- A rental car in LA , the whole trip depends on it
- A Strip hotel in Las Vegas , book ahead of any event weekend (F1 in November, EDC in May)
Day 1: LA to the Strip
Leave LA early, ideally before 10am, to clear the Inland Empire and the Cajon Pass before traffic thickens on I-15. It’s 270 miles to the Strip, 4 to 4.5 hours in normal conditions, closer to 6 on a Friday afternoon when half of Southern California has the same idea. Check into a Center Strip hotel and note the resort fee on your folio right away, typically $45-55 a night, mandatory regardless of the room rate you booked. Walk one real stretch of the Strip rather than trying to cover all 4.2 miles of it, catch the Bellagio Fountains free every 15-30 minutes, and get a proper dinner in before an early night, tomorrow’s drive starts before the desert heats up. Check the official Las Vegas visitor site for current show schedules before you commit an evening to anything ticketed.
Day 2: One more Strip morning, then back to LA
Skip the temptation to squeeze in a park day, two days genuinely isn’t enough for Death Valley or the Grand Canyon on top of this drive. Use the morning for whatever you didn’t get to the night before, a museum, a pool, breakfast away from the casino floor, then start the drive back by early afternoon. The return leg is the same 270 miles and 4 to 4.5 hours, longer if you’re leaving on a Sunday with the rest of the weekend traffic. Fill the tank in Vegas before you go, gas along I-15 through the desert costs more the further you get from the city.
Is a 2-day Vegas trip from LA actually worth the drive?
Yes, if you treat it as a genuine weekend away rather than a rushed errand. Nine-plus hours of round-trip driving for roughly 36 hours in Vegas sounds thin on paper, but it beats not going, and it’s the only Southwest destination that fits inside two days from LA without cutting a park visit down to nothing.
At a glance
| Day | Distance / drive time | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LA to Las Vegas, 270 mi / 4-4.5 hrs | Strip check-in, Bellagio Fountains, early night |
| 2 | Las Vegas to LA, 270 mi / 4-4.5 hrs | Slow morning, drive home, avoid a Sunday-evening departure if you can |
Download an offline map of the I-15 corridor before you leave LA, cell coverage drops out for long stretches through the Mojave, and a dead phone is a bad time to lose your turn-by-turn.