Nevada

One steakhouse in Nevada sits on the second floor of a casino, and its steaks are not even the whole show. Another serves cabbage soup…

A shoreline walk with no elevation gain sounds almost too easy. Let me tell you, it is real. This sandy stretch sits on the southeast…

Corn husks and chiles for these tamales are imported from Mexico. Each tamal is rolled by hand, and the recipe hasn’t changed since 1980. That’s…

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 Carson Street butcher shop will turn your deer, elk, or even alligator into snack sticks and salami. Yes, alligator made the list, and I…

Carrot cake jam. Banana nut bread jam. Pickled beet and quail eggs sitting on the same shelves as raw Sourwood honey. That lineup belongs to…

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….

One Nevada leather studio makes everything by hand, handling custom pieces and larger orders while teaching beginners the craft. Then it turns around and teaches…

Some of the best tacos in Las Vegas come from a taco truck parked in a car wash lot. Yes, you can grab birria tacos…

A San Francisco millionaire once kept a pet elephant named Mingo at his Lake Tahoe summer home. Yes, a real elephant. The building that housed…

A farm town with an ice cream parlor once sat under more than 60 feet of water. Now its foundations are back in the desert…

A wild mustang lowers its head to drink at a lake in Nevada. Nobody fenced it in, and nobody called it over. Could you really…

One of my favorite barbecue discoveries in Nevada is attached to a working meat market that sells goat and smoked items. Another one serves a…

One of the best apple donuts in Nevada needs a ticket to reach, and it only shows up for a few weeks each fall. That’s…

Strawberry cream sandwiches sit in the cooler like tiny edible works of art. Right nearby, you’ll find fluffy egg sandwiches, rice balls, and bento boxes…

A chorizo recipe passed down since 1984. Buffalo wings fried in rice oil. British pub classics served inside a historic brick building with a fireplace….

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….

Hot aloo paratha and dal makhani are waiting inside a gas station on a lonely desert highway. Yes, really. The same counter also serves burgers,…

The Las Vegas Strip sits roughly 17 to 20 miles away, yet this campground shuts its gates every summer. From June through August, the desert…

Five mineral hot spring tubs, heated naturally by the earth, wait in the mountain foothills. The water runs between 98 and 104 degrees. Eucalyptus steam…

A hotel built in 1907 was once the tallest building in Nevada. It has five stories of locally quarried stone. It also has an electric…

A waterfall in Nevada can sit about three-tenths of a mile from a parking lot. That’s shorter than some grocery store runs, and kids can…

Golden aspens, cold turquoise water, and a strip of sand with zero footprints but yours. Nevada hides beaches. Real ones, tucked at the end of…

The whole town sits on top of old silver mines. Yes, the ground under the souvenir shops and wooden sidewalks hides the tunnels that once…

A steaming bag of crab legs and shrimp hits the table, and garlic butter fogs up your glasses. Forks? Gone. Giant seafood boils rule the…

The desert looks completely different when you trade four wheels for a seat beside a train window. Suddenly, the rush disappears. Rocky hills glide past,…

The gas gauge is dropping, your snack supply is looking pathetic, and the road ahead seems determined to test your patience. Then comes a welcome…

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…

Who decided breathtaking mountain scenery should require hours of hiking and sore legs? Certainly not the road that takes you straight into a landscape of…

Holiday shopping gets a lot more interesting when you stop looking for the same things everyone else is buying. Forget predictable gifts and identical decorations….

Turquoise water so clear you can count pebbles beneath your toes. Giant granite boulders crowd this Nevada shoreline like a sculptor got carried away. Here…

Molten glass glows like a sunset while wet clay spins smooth under your palms. Your phone stays pocketed, and your hands finally run the show….

One room in this shop sells every bolt at the same low price per yard. No hunting for tags and no math in the aisle….

The brisket at this Nevada barbecue spot smokes for more than 16 hours. That’s a long time for one cut of beef. I believe it’s…

One national park in Nevada charges no entrance fee at all. Its gateway town has fewer than 100 residents. The skies above it rank among…

All-you-can-eat snow crab legs and more than 60 kinds of sushi and rolls sit under one roof in Nevada. The sushi is a true buffet,…

A whole Nevada town once sat under this lake, and parts of it are visible again. The farm town had about 500 residents, a school,…

One family farm started as a 23-acre spread tilled by horse. Today it hosts a corn maze, hayrides, and fire pits each fall. That is…

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 pancake in Las Vegas can show up flavored like s’mores, red velvet, carrot cake, or German chocolate. Another can arrive tagged as the size…

Lobster ravioli, crab cakes, and chicken Marsala come out of a kitchen that serves only about 10 to 12 tables. The plates are so generous…

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…

Peacocks strut past spring-fed lakes just a short drive from the Las Vegas Strip. Yes, real peacocks, plus swans, geese, and turtles sharing the water….

One plate at this little Nevada Chinese spot can reportedly feed two or three hungry adults. That’s not dinner for one, that’s a group project…

A giant pair of fuzzy dice hangs from the ceiling of this shop. A huge barrel of monkeys dangles nearby, like a toy box tipped…

Wild grapevines climb the walls of a desert canyon in Nevada, and in autumn they can turn bright red. That is not a sight most…

One flat price on select days covers skating and skate rentals for up to five people, and that is honestly not a typo. For a…

A creek that once supplied a whole town’s water now runs past free campsites lined with golden cottonwoods. Yes, free. No reservations, no booking apps,…

Two little chili peppers sit beside the General Tso’s Chicken on this Nevada menu. That warning means the sweet, crispy chicken brings real heat. Dried…

A two-foot sandwich stuffed with bacon and eggs on sourdough lives on the menu here. That alone made me stop scrolling. This little Nevada diner…

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…

One Nevada barbecue counter opens at 7 a.m. and serves rib tips, Basque chorizo, and a filet mignon sandwich. That lineup alone tells you how…

A Nevada couple once changed the spelling of their bakery’s name so nobody would think their pastries were deep-fried. That small fix kicked off a…

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 crashed Navy plane from a Hollywood movie sits in the desert dirt here, and it’s not even the main event. The real star is…

A sandwich bread from Florence, Italy, now draws hungry crowds in the Nevada desert. It’s called schiacciata, and the shop baking it here first opened…

A wild horse herd in Nevada once inspired a woman nicknamed Wild Horse Annie to push for national protection of mustangs. That fight started over…

A jerky shop that also smokes prime rib on an outdoor grill? That sounds like a place that many of us would stick around. This…