A Fun Week of Southwest out of LA in early April.

We are unfamiliar with the southwest and would love to see the Grand Canyon and? Taos? Sedona? Bryce? We like to hike, love historical sites, river trips, hot springs and Indian artifacts. Would really appreciate your views on planning a trip of 10- 12 days.

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

With 10-12 days your trip is possible, however it would be 4 to 5 days of driving alone to hit the spots you mention. You say a "Fun week" and then "a trip of 10-12 days" so are you thinking of a few days in LA and a week on the road ? If it is just 7 days for the road trip you might be taking on a little too much with heading out to Taos while trying to see other attractions nearer by.

For example you could head to Sedona, the Grand canyon [nearby are Oak creek canyon, Walnut canyon NM and Sunset Crater] to Monument valley via the Cameron Trading Post, Cameron. From there you could pssibly head to Page [Antelope canyon etc] and Bryce canyon and return to LA via Zion NP and Vegas.

There are many options like Joshua tree NP, Mojave NP, Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada, home to Yosemite and Sequoia NP's. This thread contains some of our favourite links to the area, you might find some useful info.

It would help to know exactly how long you are actually dedicating to the road trip and perhaps after a little look around the forums and at a good map, you can decide on a couple of attractions that really stand out to you. Once you have a couple of dots on the map we can help to join them up and make suggestions.

I would suggest doing a loop and going to Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, Mesa Verde, Monument Valley and Grand Canyon as those are my favorite spots in the "southwest". Even this is quite a bit a to see on a 10 day trip (you would pretty much be driving every day to go from one point to another on a 10 day trip from LA with stop overs in Vegas both ways) it can be done but would be quite hectic. 12 days would be more ideal but still "pushing" it.

If you are looking for a more relaxing trip from LA I would go to Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Bryce and Zion.

Taos wouldn't work for your time line if you are trying to include Grand Canyon and Bryce (although I love it there and have been many times)