Campervan rental in Las Vegas?

October 9, 2014 4:52 AM

Next March My girlfriend and I are planning a road trip from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City by way of some of the national parks between. The plan is to rent a camper in Vegas and drop it off in Salt Lake City at the end. I've looked, and there's dozens of companies who rent campers. Are there any companies that people can recommend in particular? Any to avoid? Thanks in advance.

Additionally most rentals that I can find seem to be around 500 bucks for the rental but with additional fees for mileage, with around 800-900 bucks for unlimited mileage. I'm only really familiar with the area from maps - would we need unlimited or would it potentially be cheaper to skip that?

posted by Silentgoldfish to Travel & Transportation (4 answers total)

You can play around on Google Maps to get a good idea of what your trip looks like in terms of miles. Ask it to plot Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, but then drag the line around to change from the direct route to a route that goes into the national parks. You could choose to to do side spurs into some of the parks, returning to a more straight-ahead route, or take a route that simply goes through more parks, and dragging the line around will let you see how those affect your distance. Multiply one of the distances on the high end of what you think you might do by the mileage rate from the company to get a sense of which is better.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:17 AM on October 9, 2014

I've rented from El Monte RV in both Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. I had a great experience both times. The RVs were clean, everything worked inside, and the office people were really nice and helpful.
posted by cabingirl at 6:02 AM on October 9, 2014

There may be a lot of driving once you're inside the parks as well, depending on where and when you're going (Zion and Bryce have shuttles that they encourage visitors to use, for example).
posted by rtha at 6:13 AM on October 9, 2014

I just got back from Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyon, and while we just rented a car and did tent camping, we saw several people in these campervans and their mileage costs appear to be somewhat less than a typical camper. The person I talked to who rented one said it was much more pleasant to drive than a regular camper too.

It doesn't look like you would be able to return it to Salt Lake City though.
posted by mjcon at 7:40 AM on October 9, 2014