Sin City USA, the Entertainment Capital of the World, the City That Never Sleeps — as gloriously glitzy as Las Vegas is, my companions and I suddenly decided we needed to make a break for the ‘real’ America out there beyond the glittering Strip. The question was where?

WE COULD LEAP ON A HELICOPTER AND SOAR over the Grand Canyon, take a jeep tour into the dramatic scenery of the nearby Red Rock Canyon, or hire a car and head for the majestic Hoover Dam, with perhaps a boat trip around Lake Mead as an appealing add-on. But we’d all done those things on previous visits.  Apparently one of the city’s annual highlights, August Nights, is a tribute to the cars and music of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. “Even the women here are too old,” moaned our bellman, who himself appeared vintage, as we checked into the hotel portion of the Silver Legacy Resort Casino. “I’m moving to Florida to find some babes!”At night, however, things began to perk up. The streets sparkled with flashing neon lights. The high rollers began to pour into the Silver Legacy and the nearby Eldorado and we were royally entertained in the massive, landmark Harrad’s casino by its theatre’s all bells and whistles Biggest Little Sideshow.

But that’s not the end of the story for Reno – it’s also the gateway to America’s largest alpine lake, glittering Lake Tahoe; North America’s largest concentration of ski resorts; the state capital, Carson City; Genoa, the state’s oldest town; and the colourful gold and silver mining town of Virginia City. Located in mountain terrain 24 miles south-west of Reno, the latter destination proved to be a fun-filled if slightly hokey delight, with its Victorian-era false-front homes, shops and saloons, wooden boardwalks, costumed gun-slingers and dramatic heritage. It was there that Mark Twain began his writing career on a local newspaper and So, instead, we decided to head for the hills, or, to be more, precise the Sierra Nevada mountains bordering western Nevada. A 45-minute plane ride and we were in Reno, the region’s hub, where the huge archway sign spanning the main street announced we were in the ‘Biggest Little City in the World’ (population around 231,000).

Compared to Las Vegas, which appears to reinvent itself on a daily basis, Reno seems to be luxuriating in a decades’ old time warp. There were few cars or people on the wide streets and, unless you were a keen gambler, the daylight attractions seemed to consist of rock climbing up the side of one of the few high-rise buildings, kayaking down the Truckee River, tossing baseballs at a target in the local stadium or ogling the amazing array of about 200 vintage and classic cars in the National Automobile Museum. Apparently one of the city’s annual highlights, August Nights, is a tribute to the cars and music of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. “Even the women here are too old,” moaned our bellman, who himself appeared vintage, as we checked into the hotel portion of the Silver Legacy Resort Casino. “I’m moving to Florida to find some babes!” At night, however, things began to perk up. The streets sparkled with flashing neon lights. The high rollers began to pour into the Silver Legacy and the nearby Eldorado and we were royally entertained in the massive, landmark Harrad’s casino by its theatre’s all bells and whistles Biggest Little Sideshow.

Visitors to Silver Terrace
Cemeteries are greeted by guides in mourning apparel.

But that’s not the end of the story for Reno – it’s also the gateway to America’s largest alpine lake, glittering Lake Tahoe; North America’s largest concentration of ski resorts; the state capital, Carson City; Genoa, the state’s oldest town; and the colourful gold and silver mining town of Virginia City. Located in mountain terrain 24 miles south-west of Reno, the latter destination proved to be a fun-filled if slightly hokey delight, with its Victorian-era false-front homes, shops and saloons, wooden boardwalks, costumed gun-slingers and dramatic heritage. It was there that Mark Twain began his writing career on a local newspaper and that miners made a fortune in 1859 onwards from one of America’s richest gold and silver strikes. You can still visit such historic buildings as Piper’s Opera House, built in 1885; ride on the vintage Virginia & Truckee Railroad, which once transported millions of dollars in silver ore; and learn more of the history of Virginia City – ‘America’s Largest Historic Monument’ – at the Nevada Gambling Museum and The Way It Was Museum.

But for a truly poignant trip back into the past, we took the walking tour of the hilltop Silver Terrace Cemeteries. Along the way the ‘deceased’, all in 19th-century dress, told the stories of their lives and deaths. “Life was hard in a mining town,” said one woman dressed in funereal black as she and her fellow performers recounted stories of the children who died of scarlet fever; a young woman killed in a stagecoach accident; another who drank strychnine because of an unhappy marriage; a man run over by a train; and the miners who continued to dig for gold amongst the graves. And if that weren’t enough drama for one town, Virginia City also stages such impressive annual events as its September camel races and October World Championship Outhouse Races in which decorated wooden toilets are pushed, pulled or dragged along a racetrack.

By comparison, nearby Carson City – named after famous frontiersman Kit Carson – is quite sedate. In addition to its domed State Capitol, built in 1870, and its numerous historic homes (one featured in the John Wayne film The Shootist), it is best known for two museums, the Nevada State Museum, housed in the historic former US Mint, and the Nevada State Railroad Museum, as well as for its surrounding ‘Divine Nine’ golf courses. En route to Lake Tahoe, around 14 miles away, we drove through the tranquil Carson Valley, stopping for refreshments in the village of Genoa’s 1853 Genoa Bar. Established by the Mormons in 1851 as the first settlement in Nevada, shady Genoa is also home to a replica of the original trading post, a regional museum in the old courthouse and a cluster of small and rather charming shops and galleries.

At Ski Run Marina, we boarded the Tahoe Queen paddlewheeler for a dinner cruise around part of the 22-mile-long, 12-mile-wide, 1,645ft-deep lake known as ‘Big Blue’. Along the lake’s 72- mile shoreline in both Nevada and California are marinas, resort hotels, beaches and casinos, but the area is particularly well-known for its wealth of ski resorts. One of its largest and most popular is 4,000- acre, appropriately-named Heavenly. As we ascended in its gondola to a viewing deck at more than 9,000 feet we couldn’t help but remember what Mark Twain wrote about the lake in Roughing It: “As (Tahoe) lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole world affords.”