Author: Wren Sutcliffe

One Reno thrift shop keeps a whole upstairs floor of vintage clothes, plus racks of costumes built for themed parties. I had no idea a…

Fresh cream fruit sandwiches on soft milk bread sit in a cooler near the onigiri. That pairing alone tells you this little Nevada grocery plays…

One small Nevada shop sells quilting cottons and cross stitch supplies side by side, then finishes your quilt on a longarm machine. I love that…

At one Las Vegas-area swap meet, a kid can spot carnival rides and Pokemon cards before the sun is fully up. The gates open at…

Nevada has a national park that charges no entrance fee at all. I had to read that twice. Then I learned it sits about an…

One Nevada burger stand fires up a drive-in movie screen right next to its grill. You order a burger, park your car, and catch a…

One antique mall in this state has a sign out front bragging about its floor space. Shoppers say the claim holds up once you start…

One small fabric shop in rural Nevada offers sewing classes that families are eager to sign young kids up for. That detail stopped me cold….

A model of the Truckee River runs across a museum floor, and kids are allowed to splash in it. Parents are quietly advised to pack…

Scuff marks from kids sliding down the banisters are still on the walls of one old school in Nevada. They just stayed, like a note…

A record store in Nevada that stays open until 10 PM every single night of the week sounds like a teenager’s dream. Add listening stations,…

A motel along a desert highway used to be called the Burro Inn, and the burros apparently never got the memo about the name change….

Surfboards hang on the walls of one Nevada breakfast cafe, a long way from the nearest wave. I love that kind of surprise. It tells…

One small quilt shop in Nevada rents out vintage Singer Featherweight machines. Yes, you can borrow a classic little sewing machine like a library book….

The donuts at this little shop are made by the owner and his wife, and the doors open at 6 a.m. every day of the…

A wooden badge. That’s the prize some kids earn at a national park desk in Nevada, after they finish a workbook and raise a hand…

Some of the trees on this trail were already old when the Egyptian pyramids were young. And you can walk right up to them. They…

A landfill boss spent about ten years building a full-scale Stonehenge out of concrete and steel. It sits right next to his landfill, and admission…

A single dollar gets an adult into a log trading post museum, and kids under 13 walk in free. That price alone made me stop…

A chocolate pistachio cake once billed as world-famous sits on the dessert menu of an old Nevada diner. That alone got my attention, and the…

A little train chugs families out to a pretend Wild West town, just minutes from the Las Vegas Strip. That alone got my attention. Then…

A two-dollar kids’ ticket still exists in Nevada, and it comes with a double feature under the open sky. I had to read that twice….

Five dollars. That’s roughly what a day-use pass has run here, and it can cover a whole carload of people headed for a desert reservoir…

More than 1,000 ancient carvings sit on boulders beside a Nevada highway, and nobody takes a ticket. I had to read that twice. Those boulders…

A silver service made from 5,000 ounces of mined silver sits in a museum built inside an old U.S. Mint. Its lining? Gold from a…

The rocks here formed from sand dunes about 150 million years ago, and they still glow red like they caught fire. That’s not a poetic…

One Basque dining room in Nevada started as a boarding house in 1910, and it still serves dinner to strangers sitting side by side. That…

One Nevada taco counter never closes, and its chicken tacos ring up at less than two bucks apiece. That’s not a typo. Another spot lets…

A Belgian draft horse named Momma helps kids learn to ride across the Mojave Desert in Nevada. Belgians rank among the biggest, strongest horse breeds…

A cool breeze rising out of the ground is how this cave first got noticed back in the 1880s. A rancher felt it, followed it,…

Five railroad tunnels, each about 30 feet tall, line a lakeside path that once hauled supplies for one of America’s most famous building projects. The…

A room full of rescued cats in Nevada comes with name signs on the walls, so you can match every whisker to a personality. Staff…

Some of the carvings on these dark boulders may be more than 8,000 years old. That means people were pecking designs into stone here long…

One Nevada breakfast spot turns its biscuits into dessert, serving biscuit bread pudding on the same menu as the gravy. Another sells biscuits by the…

Decorated coffins race down a hay-lined street every fall in one small Nevada town. People cheer from the curb. Then they wander over to a…

Old loggers in the Sierra often cut trees three to four feet above the ground. Some of those stumps are still standing more than 125…

A faded sign, a half-full parking lot, and a hunch that the coffee would be strong were all it took to pull off a Nevada…

A dirt road in the high desert of Nevada does not look like it leads anywhere special. Then a black bear lumbers past a boulder,…

A wrong turn and an empty stomach once led me to a plain little diner booth, and the pancake that landed in front of me…

A paper bag with a grease spot on the bottom is usually a good sign. That is what we kept carrying out of small strip-mall…

A quick bathroom stop off a quiet Nevada highway turned into a three-hour lesson I never saw coming. Out in the sagebrush, carved boulders and…

A hand-painted sign, a dirt driveway, and a goat staring at us over a fence was all it took to change our Saturday plans in…

A stone cottage with a garden out back does not look like the kind of place that would change your whole idea of breakfast. Then…

A dusty pull-off on a quiet Nevada back road did not look like much at first glance. Then a small red stone glinted in the…

A plain shopping plaza is not where most people expect to find a taste of Poland in Nevada. Yet that is exactly where a tiny,…

The plan was a quick stretch break, maybe ten minutes on a bench while the kids burned off some energy. Two hours later, we were…

We only ducked inside to get out of the Nevada sun for ten minutes. Instead, we found trees growing up through a concrete building, a…

A paper takeout box that barely closes tells you a lot about a kitchen. We kept finding that box all over Nevada, from busy valley…

The plan was just to stretch our legs and grab a snack on a quiet stroll through an old Nevada mining town. Then a set…

A quick fuel stop on a lonely Nevada highway turned into a three-hour detour because of one old brick building by the tracks. Inside, the…

A plain beige building off a Nevada highway does not look like it could swallow a whole morning. Then the doors slide open, the racks…

Plenty of Nevada families assume a fun afternoon has to cost a lot. Then you wander into a plain storefront on a hunch, spot a…

The pavement ended, the truck started rattling, and for a while it felt like a bad idea. Then the ridge opened up, and a scatter…

The plan was simple: stretch our legs on a short mountain trail in eastern Nevada and head back down for lunch. We did not expect…

Driving through a quiet Nevada neighborhood, you expect gravel yards, block walls, and maybe a basketball hoop. You do not expect a life-sized dinosaur staring…

Nevada has a way of hiding its best afternoons behind plain storefronts. A low building off a busy boulevard, a parking lot that looks half-empty,…

Breakfast used to be the cheapest meal of the day, and in a few Nevada diners it still is. We spent weeks pulling off highways…

A burrito should not need two hands and a game plan, but that is exactly what happened on one hungry afternoon in Nevada. The building…

Driving across the middle of Nevada, the highway can go quiet for an hour at a stretch, and then a row of brick storefronts appears…

A wrong turn down a back alley in Nevada can end with a wall two stories tall painted in colors you did not expect out…