I would be happy to host the non-stop gay fuckfest at my house in Goldfield. But we will probably have to take breaks to shoo away the wild donkeys from eating my flowers and vegetables.
R122, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of ghost towns throughout Nevada, and many more remnants of mining operations scattered around. Someone recently discovered an Army camp from around the time of the Civil War, before Nevada was a state. Goldfield is a strange exception because it's a ghost town with people living in it, some in dilapidated 100-year-old houses (the wood is well preserved by the cold, dry climate), many in junky trailers, but some in very nice houses too. My friend built his porch from wood that was once owned by Wyatt and Virgil Earp.
Bodie State Historic Park is just inside California, but is the best-preserved ghost town in the U.S., as if the people just left. It is in a state of arrested decay due to the high altitude and cold, dry air. There's an admission fee of $8 now. And you can buy souvenirs like "God help us, We're goin' to Bodie" T-shirts and the like. Further south is Lee Vining, California, with the Upside-Down House. Further south still is the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest with the world's oldest trees; the Methuselah Tree is 4,847 years old. I was lucky to get to visit Darrough's Hot Springs, Nevada, a former resort with a century old 18-room hotel, a geyser on the property, a swimming pool heated by the hot spring, and horses ambling around. You can visit the places where "The Misfits" was filmed, and at certain times you can even adopt a wild horse from the BLM if you're interested.
There are other odd towns everywhere. Mina had a lobster farm until the federal government put a stop to it. Genoa is the oldest town in Nevada, and immaculately kept, with the oldest bar in Nevada, opened in the 1860s. Hawthorne has the world's largest ammunition depot, 2400 bunkers of bombs and ammo, and there's even a bomb museum where you can buy empty bombs and get inside a tank if you want. I buy old wooden dynamite boxes there. Rachel, Nevada is the closest you can get to Area 51. But it is just a few buildings, not much, really. An alien-themed cafe. Near Boundary Peak, the highest point in Nevada, there's a former brothel just inside the CA/NV state line onto which the owner has spray painted "Closed. Beat it."
And of course there's Burning Man, a temporary city that prides itself on its strangeness. They recently bought the strange Fly Geyser formation.
Beatty, Nevada has some interesting sights: the Atomic Inn, former housing for workers of the nuclear testing programs of the 1950s and 1960s, now a motel. Bailey's Hot Springs with what amounts to a tiny zoo with 2 small buffalo and many other animals. The Rhyolite ghost town just south of Beatty, and Goldwell Open Air Museum (shown in the photo linked below).
