Better Know a Swing State: Nevada

Besides the gaming cities of Las Vegas and Reno, folks here may not know much about the Sagebrush State, so, if you’re encouraging folks there to vote for Harris/Walz, want to visit or are just curious, here are a few nuggets from my travels.  

Great Basin National Park is awesome, with impressive cave tours, dark skies filled with stars, beautiful mountain views, and best of all the ancient Bristlecone Pine trees above on Wheeler Summit.  The Great Basin is actually a huge geologic and heritage area encompassing virtually all of Nevada and parts of several neighboring states.  The roads are long and lonely, hiking over 10,000’ is strenuous, but the park is worth the effort!  

I visit national park units, but Valley of Fire State Park deserves a mention here too.  Less than an hour’s drive from Vegas, you can find Arch Rock, Balancing Rock & Fire Wave, which is made of beautiful layered pink and beige sandstone.  

The Old Spanish Trail, California & Mormon Pioneer Trails and the Pony Express all have stops here you can visit.  There are also fossil sites and Native American spiritual sites.  And much of Lake Mead NRA is on the Nevada side of the Colorado River, with good kayaking above and below the Hoover Dam.  

Fun facts: the Silver State also created great fortunes from the Comstock Lode near Virginia City, including the Citizen Kane Hearst and the Stanford families.  It’s also called the Battle Born State, as it rushed to join the Union during the Civil War.  And the actual state name comes from the Spanish meaning ‘snowy’, referring to the mountains seen by Spanish explorers in winter.  

While the wide-open spaces may seem empty, to me the long highways are liberating, especially when the speed limit is 80.  I love taking in the views, stopping in quirky towns, having a sarsaparilla at an old cowboy saloon, or wandering nervously around one of the many ghost towns.  

Hope some background when writing postcards or making calls to Nevadans helps Kamala Harris & Tim Walz win the jackpot of Nevada’s six electoral votes this election!  Thanks for reading!