Top Las Vegas Family Friendly Parks

A Las Vegas trip with kids deserves a visit to the many parks located within and around this sandy town! 1. Probably best known is the Grand Canyon Park, with its diverse terrain offering majestic landscapes, stunning viewpoints, leisurely canyon rim strolls, day hikes, smooth water rafting and rugged backcountry roads for all the family to explore. This park is actually located in Arizona, 300 miles southeast of Las Vegas, but most Las Vegas Strip hotels offer fun and instructive round trip helicopter and airplane tours to it, which can take as little as 3 hours. 2. Red Rock Canyon Park is a popular national conservation area located 20 miles west of Las Vegas and named for its fossilized sand dunes, which owe their fabled color to centuries of iron oxide buildup. Keystone Thrust Fault, with its contrasting limestone and sandstone hues, is a sight for the whole family to behold. Hiking trails abound, some leading to cascading waterfalls. Adults and kids alike can marvel at the varied desert flora and fauna, including approximately 200 animal species, featuring mountain lions, coyotes, golden eagles, hummingbirds and wild horses. In the Visitor Center, the family can understand the geographical history of this park, see native Indian artwork and meet the resident protected tortoises! There are also many park options for the family inside the city. 3. Floyd Lamb Park: This Las Vegas Park offers families luxuriant flora and fauna with views of the Sheep and Spring Mountain Ranges. The workings of an early Las Vegas settler ranch are demonstrated to visitors. 4. Springs Preserve provides a fun family day to trek and birdwatch through a Mojave Desert Scrub ‘botanical garden’. Water conservation in an urban desert environment is also explained. 5. Sunset Park: Its 27-hole disc golf course, 14-acre pond housing waterfowl and fish, remote control boating, basketball and tennis courts, fitness tracks and dedicated picnic areas will keep the whole family happy. In the Fall, the park hosts a colorful Renaissance Fair. 6. Las Vegas Sportspark: The whole family can work off those holiday indulgencies in this Las Vegas Park. Activities offered include indoor soccer, basketball, volleyball, self-defense classes and karate, with aerobics and gymnastics for kids betwee 18 months and 6 years of age. Some league sports, including softball, are available for all ages. 7. The Zoological – Botanical Park provides an entertaining experience for the whole family. Among the 400 endangered species, this relatively small Las Vegas zoo houses the recently added Indo-China tiger and a pair of Madagascan fossas. The zoo is interactive; visitors can feed the resident peacocks, pigeons, roosters and pygmy goats. Featuring chatty cockatoos, armored alligators and lordly lions, this Las Vegas Zoo is an ideal family outing.