Nevada is an arid state of the USA, lying between California
and Utah. Most of the state is within the Great Basin, but parts of the
northeast drain into the Snake River and the southern portion is within the
Mohave Desert and the Colorado River drainage. Please note that while many
outsiders pronounce the state's name as "ne-VAH-duh", the correct
local pronunciation is, with a short "a" as in apple, Although the
majority of tourists only visit Las Vegas, Reno and Tahoe to gamble, watch
shows, and indulge themselves in food and drink, Nevada offers the more
discerning traveler western frontier experiences verging on horse opera cliché,
and landscapes utterly different from Europe, East Asia or more populated parts
of North America. In this more primitive environment, gambling seems not so
much a high-tech means of fleecing the overly optimistic as the direct
descendent of the itinerant cardsharp. Legal brothels are another holdover,
from the "soiled doves" of frontier times. It isn't that Nevadans approve,
so much as they haven't gotten around to outlawing all of their history yet.
