Nevada

A concha stuffed with filling, like a sweet bun keeping a secret, is a real thing you can buy in Nevada. I learned that and…

Bright yellow leaves are not what most expect from sagebrush country. Yet every late October, giant cottonwoods along a desert river turn gold. Beside them…

Kids can turn sideways and shimmy through clay hallways in eastern Nevada for about the price of a drive-thru lunch. The walls rise high overhead,…

A concrete face stares out from a wall of glass bottles beside the interstate. Behind it, more than two hundred sculptures crowd a stretch of…

Skeletons, grinning pumpkins, and hundreds of glowing trees take over a small park in Nevada each October. The mood stays silly and never truly scary….

Seared foie gras lands on white tablecloths in a small Nevada town known for pioneer history. This country French restaurant pairs classic dishes with a…

A burger named after space aliens is served about 160 miles from the nearest big city. Folks drive across empty Nevada desert just to order…

One chef in northern Nevada trained in Italy, staged at Noma in Copenhagen, and opened a restaurant on the Italian coast. Then he came home…

Fifty-pound bags of potatoes. Five-gallon buckets of soy sauce. That’s a normal shopping list at this warehouse, and I honestly love it. Most of the…

A railroad that started laying track in 1869 is still hauling passengers through a tunnel in the Nevada hills. Kids can ride it in an…

The boss of this bookstore is a dog. Her name is Buffy, and she calls herself a vampire slayer in dog form. She doesn’t ring…

A wave of canceled wedding cakes in 2020 is the reason this cinnamon roll exists for the public. One baker lost her big orders and…

A steel cage hangs over a 500-foot stope, and kids get to stand right on it and look down. That’s not a theme park ride….

Some shops sell supplies, and this one has kept makers stocked since 1957. Three generations of the same family have run the counter. How many…

A dozen farm fresh eggs for five dollars. Garlic pulled from the ground for under a dollar. Those are real weekend prices at markets right…

Walls covered in customer signatures say a lot about a dining room. So do ravioli presses that crossed an ocean to get there. Nevada serves…

This Nevada butcher shop handles everything from weeknight chicken to holiday rib roasts. Prime tomahawk steaks and halal lamb fill the bright display cases. Adventurous…

This Nevada buffet gives seafood fans plenty to chase, starting with the crab. Snow crab, blue crab, and salt and pepper crab all show up…

One Reno bookstore sets dollar books outside its front door, right where you can grab them before you even reach the register. That single detail…

Karts on one track here are advertised to hit up to 47 miles per hour. That’s not a typo, and this isn’t some highway on-ramp…

A pizza topped with meatballs, bacon, cheddar, and mozzarella is basically a cheeseburger that moved to Italy. One family-run Nevada pizzeria makes exactly that, and…

The building ran for almost a full century, crushing Comstock ore from 1860 all the way to 1959. Today, volunteers still switch on its giant…

One Chinese restaurant hands out two different menus, and the second one is printed in both English and Chinese. That second menu is where things…

A retired French military police officer spent a year in baking school. Then he opened a real French bakery in the Nevada desert. He didn’t…

Order one entree here and the table fills with soup, salad, beans, mashed potatoes, fries, bread, and bread pudding. That’s before your steak even shows…

Korean barbecue, sushi, and hot pot all share one table here in Nevada, and the whole spread is all-you-can-eat. That’s three cravings answered in a…

A four-story brick hotel stands on a quiet Nevada corner, and you can’t book a single room inside it. Its doors have stayed closed to…

One Nevada diner serves a prime rib and lobster plate that comes with drawn butter. It sits upstairs in downtown Reno, and the price is…

The pizza crust at this Nevada spot contains zero wheat, rye, barley, sugar, or seed oils. It is made from scratch in a certified gluten-free…

A 1920s traveler saw this desert valley at sunset and said it looked like it was on fire. Who could argue with a name like…

In one remote corner of Nevada, the night is so dark it carries the official title of International Dark Sky Sanctuary. That label sits on…

Fries cooked in beef fat are only the side act at this butcher counter. The real headliners are dry-aged steaks, including tomahawks and bone-in ribeyes…

One Las Vegas Italian spot serves generous dinners and sends an accordion player wandering between the tables. It has done its thing on the same…

A stamp in a road-trip passport can get you inside a working opera house in the middle of the high desert. That alone made me…

Arrowheads, ancient stone tools, and hand-woven baskets share a roof with chicken fried steak and homemade pie. Nobody sees that combo coming. The artifacts come…

One of the cheapest places to load up on steaks in Nevada never locks its doors, not even at 3 a.m. Another started cutting meat…

The folks behind this farm say they planted the first corn maze in the West, and that claim made me sit up. The same family…

Itchy earlobes have ruined plenty of pretty earrings. That problem shrinks fast inside a Nevada showroom stocked with more than 10,000 hypoallergenic supplies. For about…

Dozens of rescue cats lounge in cage-free rooms here, and walking in to hang out with them costs nothing. There’s no ticket and no appointment,…

A national magazine once claimed this highway had nothing worth seeing. State officials laughed it off and turned the insult into a slogan. Decades later,…

Elvis Presley reportedly ate at this diner about four times a week. Members of the Rat Pack and Liberace stopped by too. The story began…

Nevada grave markers rarely bother with gentle wording. Some spell out exactly how a pioneer died, carved into weathered wood. That blunt honesty gives me…

A single sack of flour once sold here again and again, raising thousands of dollars for wounded soldiers’ care. That flour came from a little…

A real prison that held inmates from 1862 until 2012 now hosts not one, but three separate haunted houses. That alone made me sit up…

The crispy spring rolls here are stuffed with turkey, and you’re supposed to wrap them in lettuce with fresh herbs. That one detail already tells…

One Nevada ranch has been family-owned since 1861. That’s three years before Nevada even became a state, and they still sell beef to regular families…

More than half of this wildlife refuge is completely off-limits to visitors. Even wildlife staff face strict access restrictions, with visits requiring special coordination with…

A mountain creek tumbles right between the campsites here, so your bedtime soundtrack comes free with the reservation. It runs loud enough that some sites…

A Victorian doll, a 1950s lunchbox, and a stack of old comics can all share the same aisle at one Nevada antique mall. The booths…

Thirty dollars rarely stretches far at a grocery store these days. In one small Nevada farm town, it buys a basket packed with local produce….

In Elko, a small shop sells beadwork supplies run by an enrolled Shoshone Bannock tribal member, and it even hosts beadwork classes. I love that…

Holiday baking eats butter faster than recipes admit. Nevada has stores built for that kind of appetite. Some sell flour and sugar in sacks big…

A Chinese restaurant inside an ordinary business park isn’t exactly where you’d expect to find fried rice portions big enough to share. But that’s exactly…

Twenty kinds of house-made sausage live behind one butcher counter, and one of them is a Swedish potato sausage. Yes, potato. In a sausage. I…

One bakery in Elko opens at 4 AM on weekdays, and its counter is stacked with savory pasties and fruit pies. I love that someone…

The orange chicken at one small Chinese kitchen in Nevada doesn’t sit under a heat lamp waiting for you. It gets cooked when you order…

Late fall in the high country can change in an afternoon. A sunny morning drive may end with snow on the pass. Plenty of Nevada…

Nevada hands families an extra day off right after Thanksgiving. Why spend it stuck on the couch at home? This desert city packs a surprising…

A Christmas light maze in southern Nevada sprawls across more than ten acres. It is billed as the largest of its kind in the world….

One Nevada menu lists a flapjack that diners describe as the size of the table. Not the plate. The table. That detail sent me down…