Harry Reid International

Fifteen miles from the Las Vegas Strip and a world away, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is a 3,000-foot escarpment of red and tan Aztec sandstone shoved up against grey limestone cliffs by the Keystone Thrust Fault — a textbook spot where older rock was pushed up and over younger rock. The result is a dramatic banded wall rising over the Mojave floor, laced with canyons, springs, and some of the best rock climbing in the country (climbers come from everywhere for the sandstone). A 13-mile one-way scenic loop drive traces the base. Wild burros, descendants of miners' stock, wander the desert here, and bighorn sheep work the cliffs.

A 726-foot concrete arch-gravity dam wedged into Black Canyon on the Colorado River, completed in 1936 — more than two years ahead of schedule — by a workforce that totaled around 21,000 during the Depression. Tallest dam in the world at the time. The dam holds back Lake Mead, which when full is the largest reservoir in the US by volume; current drought has dropped water levels dramatically, exposing the historic "bathtub ring" along the canyon walls. The Arizona-Nevada border runs across the top of the dam. Pre-WWII Art Deco styling — sculptures of winged figures, terrazzo floors, brass clocks set to Nevada and Arizona time on either side.

Nevada's oldest and most beloved state park, named for what the low sun does to it: the bright red Aztec sandstone outcrops seem to catch fire, glowing against the grey-and-tan limestone mountains around them. The sandstone is petrified Jurassic sand dunes — the same formation that surfaces across the Colorado Plateau — eroded into pinnacles, beehives, arches, and slot canyons. People have been here a long time: petroglyphs carved by the Basketmaker and Early Pueblo peoples, some 2,500 years old, cover the rocks at Atlatl Rock and Petroglyph Canyon. It's a short hop northeast of Las Vegas but feels like another planet — which is why it has stood in for Mars in the movies.

Lowest point in North America — Badwater Basin sits 282 feet below sea level. Hottest air temperature ever recorded on Earth: 134°F at Furnace Creek, July 10, 1913. The salt flats stretch 200 square miles. From the air, the alkali polygons look like cracked white marble. Pilots who fly the Eastern Sierra often loop south through Death Valley — Lone Pine to Furnace Creek to Tehachapi — the most extreme low-altitude scenic route in the country.