Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw is planning a trip along US Highway 50 beginning this spring. The trip will start in Maryland and continue through the country with some stops along the way. Highway 50 travels through Nevada and the Lake Tahoe area before ending up in Sacramento.

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Haunting graveyards are not part of my normal routine, but there’s something intriguing about Nevada’s old cemeteries that grab my imagination.

Many cemeteries in Nevada, such as this one in Eureka, date back to the 19th and early-20th centuries. Photo by Joyce HollisterOn a jaunt through Nevada on a recent weekend, my husband, Gim, and I found colorful vestiges of Memorial Day in Austin’s and Eureka’s historic cemeteries, where bright plastic flowers laid next to headstones and contrasted with the dry desert surroundings.

The cemeteries date back to the 19th and early-20th centuries and contain Civil War soldiers, miners, merchants, ranchers, babies, mothers, and grandmothers. Many of the graves have sunk, forming shallow depressions, and their markers are lost. Elaborately engraved headstones anchor an impressive number of graves, evidence not only of grief but of the skill of marble carvers.

Graves are often...

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Dotti Cullen displays the quilt she donated to the Nevada Commission on Tourism. Photo by Steve WoodburyRecently a delightful woman and her husband dropped by the Paul Laxalt Building—home of the Nevada Commission on Tourism and Nevada Magazine—with a charming quilt and a story to go with it.

Dotti and Ray Cullen told us how, about a dozen years ago, Dotti’s brother and sister-in-law, Fred and Debbie Halverson, and their young boys, four-year-old Christopher and eight-year-old Kim, joined Dotti and Ray on a trip across Nevada from their home in Fernley. The Halversons live in Washington, D.C., and Dotti was afraid that Nevada couldn’t compete with the attractions of our nation’s capital.

After much thought, she said, “we decided we’d do a Wild West adventure. Surviving Highway 50—that was our idea.” Dotti translated...

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These guys at jeepbrokers.com put together a big road trip in a 1948 Willy’s Jeep that covered ten states in the west this year. All in all, they plan on covering a little bit each year until they have traveled through all 48 of the contiguous states. They are doing the trips to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, an organization set up to “honor and empower wounded warriors.” Nevada happened to be a part of their 2008 plans, and it seemed like we made sure to keep it interesting for them.

They crossed Nevada on The Loneliest Road in America, U.S. Highway 50. Entering from Utah and heading all the way across the state, they left Nevada at Lake Tahoe.

Along the way, they ran into a little trouble between Austin and Fallon, but made it out of there just...

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The Shoe Tree: located about 100 miles east of Reno on Highway 50. Photo by Ryan Jerz.The first week of April was a big one for Nevada Tourism. We at Travel Nevada held our annual Rural Roundup Conference in my hometown, Elko. As part of the trip, most of the staffers here and quite a few of the attendees rode a bus out to Elko from Carson City. While the conference was great, what I really want to talk about today is the return trip.

On the return we stopped for the night in Eureka and were treated to a fantastic performance of Romeo and Juliet by the Utah Shakespeare Company at the Eureka Opera House. The next day we rode down Highway...

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