2-Day Southwest Road Trip: Zion, Bryce, Antelope Canyon & Horseshoe Bend from Las Vegas

You leave Las Vegas before dawn, the Strip’s neon losing its hold as the van eats miles of highway and the desert opens like a folded map. By midmorning the cliffs in Zion are already warming—red cliffs catching light and throwing it back in long shadows—while Bryce Canyon waits a few hours farther up the road with its amphitheater of hoodoos brightening into deep oranges and pinks. On the second day, Antelope Canyon’s narrow seams of stone funnel beams of sun into a carved cathedral of sand, and the Colorado River performs its signature curl at Horseshoe Bend below.