Pioneer Saloon Ride and Dine Las Vegas Tour

You're behind the wheel of a RZR SxS, kicking up Mojave dust toward a Nevada ghost town that somehow never fully quit. The destination is a saloon built in 1913 -- with real bullet holes in the walls. The ride there is half the story.

The Pioneer Saloon Ride and Dine isn't a sightseeing loop -- it's a sequence that earns its payoff. You start at Base Camp with a guide who knows the Mojave the way most people know their own backyard, then climb into a RZR side-by-side and head into terrain that doesn't care about paved roads. Washes, ridge lines, and wide stretches of open desert fill the windshield as the Strip disappears behind you. The guide keeps pace and context flowing in equal measure, pointing out features of the landscape that a solo traveler would simply roll past without a second thought.

Goodsprings itself is the reveal. The town sits quiet and sun-bleached at the base of the Spring Mountains, and the Pioneer Saloon has stood at its center since 1913. The building's stamped-tin walls and weathered wood have absorbed more than a century of Nevada living -- including some rounds fired at close range, which left marks still visible today. Clark Gable reportedly spent days here after his wife Carole Lombard died in a 1942 plane crash on Mount Potosi nearby, waiting for news and refusing to leave. That kind of history doesn't get installed; it accumulates. Fans of Fallout: New Vegas will recognize the town immediately -- Bethesda used Goodsprings as the literal starting point for that game's world, and standing in the real version of it has a disorienting, satisfying quality.

Lunch at the saloon gives the dust a chance to settle before the ride back begins. A stop at the Goodsprings General Store is worth the few minutes, and the return route may swing past Seven Magic Mountains -- Ugo Rondinone's tower of painted boulders rising from the desert floor just off I-15, a jarring burst of color against all that open Nevada sky. By the time Base Camp appears again, the Strip feels like a different world entirely.