Forget gambling – here’s where Vegas gets interesting

Rust-red rocks rear up out of the desert floor like a scene from a Road Runner cartoon. I snap a picture of myself next to one and send it to my mum. “Where are you?” she messages back. “I thought you were in Vegas?”

I am, but this isn’t the Vegas that most tourists experience.

The red rocks belong to the Valley of Fire State Park, a 46,000-acre expanse – almost twice the size of Bristol – of naturally sculpted red sandstone that was coiffed from desert dunes more than 150 million years ago.

“Half of Vegas’s locals haven’t even been out here,” my guide, Stephen, from Pink Adventure Tours, tells me as we rattle through the park’s trails in a custom-made lipstick-pink Jeep Wrangler.

Despite being a 50-minute drive from the Las Vegas Strip, the park is a world apart from the city. Whereas The Strip attracts 40.8 million visitors annually – with arrivals from the UK up by 14 per cent between 2022 and 2023 – the park gets just over 800,000. With the average visitor to Vegas staying 3.3 nights, many don’t have time to experience its lesser-known attractions.

In the Valley of Fire State Park, high-rise hotels are replaced by sky-scraping slabs of stone and the soundtrack of slot machines is substituted for the chirrups of chickadees and the scurrying of ground squirrels among the creosote bushes, cholla plants and black brush.

Some of the rocks are like Rorschach tests, forcing you to see shapes and patterns in them – an elephant, a grand piano, a screaming gorilla, a spaceship. Others are striated with colour, like raspberry-ripple ice cream.

Then there are those with petroglyphs (rock carvings). These primitive drawings of horned sheep, desert tortoises and riverbeds are thought to have been carved into the rock by the hunter-gatherer peoples who lived here between 2,000BC and 500AD.

History isn’t something you expect to get from Vegas, as it was only established as a city in 1905. Yet go in search of a lesson and you’ll find you’re swimming in it.

At The Neon Museum, a 10-minute drive from the Strip, more than 250 disused and restored neon signs tell tales of a past that’s as colourful as the lights themselves.

Using the fluorescent signs of decommissioned hotels like The Moulin Rouge, The Red Barn and The Green Shack, museum guides spill secrets on everything from organised crime and early segregation to the birth of Vegas’s LGBTQ+ scene and the offstage antics of superstars like Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.

Further stories about the making of Vegas are disclosed on a Secret Food tour of the Downtown area.

It has an energy that’s as atomic as the bombs that were tested 65 miles north in the 1950s. Street artists strut around dressed as bull whip-bearing policemen or nipple-tasselled show girls, tourists zigzag around with yards of cocktails, and above Fremont Street, a 1,375m-long canopy roof displays psychedelic, sense-assailing light and sound shows on repeat.

In the run-up to Christmas, the canopy shows are holiday-themed, the street performers don Santa hats, and the whole area glints in the glow of a 50ft Christmas tree.

At Evel Pie, a pizza bar dedicated to Evel Knievel, I learn how Evel’s 1967 attempt to jump the 43m-long fountains at Caesars Palace ended with the daredevil spending 29 days in hospital.

Over an “original” and “secret” version of shrimp cocktail at Saginaw’s deli, I find out how it became Vegas’s signature dish. The Golden Gate casino started selling it for 50 cents a serving in 1959, and by 1991 it had sold more than 25 million portions. It was discontinued in 2017, but Saginaw’s brought it back in 2020.

Today, tourists and locals alike queue up to try it, alongside too-big-to-bite-into Reubens and grilled cheese sandwiches.

During a comfort break at Main Street Station Hotel, I’m surprised to be snuck into the men’s bathrooms to see how a slab of the Berlin Wall backs the urinals as part of the hotel’s eclectic antiques collection.

Of course, the Las Vegas food scene isn’t all kooks and gimmicks. The city brims with remarkable places to eat. Set among the vintage shops of the Arts District, Esther’s Kitchen is worth visiting for the homemade sourdough bread and basil ricotta dip starter alone. At Carson Kitchen in Downtown, meanwhile, I discover that the bacon jam and havarti cheese sharing plate is too good to share.

The surprises continue at The Vault, a new speakeasy in the Bellagio hotel. Identifiable by an inconspicuous zigzag symbol next to the door, this chandelier-lit bar serves theatrical cocktails like the Vapour Trail, served beneath a smoke-filled cloche.

Passing through the concealed door into The Vault feels a little like slipping down the rabbit hole, and there’s a similar sense of being in another realm at Area 15, a five-minute drive from the Strip. This warehouse-sized attraction is filled with virtual reality gaming areas, immersive experiences and rides.

I start at Wink World, a “psychedelic funhouse” created by Chris Wink, chief creative officer at the Blue Man Group. Across the course of a series of rooms, I see plasma balls moving in time to music, mini astronaut models bouncing up and down from the ceiling on slinky springs, and neon whirligigs reflected infinitely by mirrors. If Zebedee had fever dreams, they would be a lot like this.

The recently opened Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart is similarly surreal. Here I walk through a supermarket fridge into an alternative world where I solve a series of riddles and puzzles.

As I prepare to leave Vegas, I realise that I’ve not put a single dollar in a slot machine. I quickly stuff a fiver into a one-armed bandit at Caesars Palace, where I’ve spent the past four nights. I lose, but it doesn’t matter. I leave feeling like I’ve hit the jackpot for experiencing Vegas’s lesser-seen side.

Getting there
Norse Atlantic Airways offers direct flights from Gatwick three times a week until March 2025.

Staying there
Rates at Caesars Palace Las Vegas start at £72 a night (excluding resort fees and taxes).

More information
visitlasvegas.com