Grand Canyon Western Ranch

For shops, bars, eats and supermarkets, the town of Meadview is 25 minutes’ drive away. It’s also a top spot to rent canoes and kayaks or book boat trips on the Colorado River, and it's the starting point for wilderness hikes of all lengths. Good ones to start with are the paths to South Cove (half an hour by car) and Waggon Trail Bay, which both finish on the river; local tipsters suggest booking a boat to pick you up for a pleasant and relaxing return journey. Lake Mead, an hour and a half away in Nevada, is the focal point of a 1.5 million-acre recreation area, popular with fisherfolk, hikers and wildlife spotters. Take a boat to the mighty Hoover Dam, walk history on the former railroad trail, raft down Black Canyon and picnic among the martian-looking rocks and dunes of Redstone. And if all that sounds a bit much? Lounge around at Ladder Cove and take a swim. For a dazzling contrast to all that nature, the shows, casinos, glitz and kitsch of Las Vegas are a little under two hours’ drive away (or less, if you want to arrive like a high-roller in the ranch helicopter). If you’re travelling onwards from the ranch, it’s just under six hours to Los Angeles and four to Phoenix.