Art and Dessert in the Desert
It’s hard to beat finding unexpected good eats in a town with a population of just over a thousand. I’m not saying small towns are without culinary talents. Until the help of Yelp, locating the best restaurants in an unknown place was a hit-and-miss affair.
Traveling from Las Vegas to Death Valley National Park, we found our gourmet oasis at KC’s Outpost in Beatty, Nevada. An order of freshly carved turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce sandwiched between two slices of homemade bread was just the nourishment needed a few hours into our road trip. We capped off our meal with a piece of red velvet cake covered in moist crumbs and accented with a thin layer of chocolate for added oomph to its subtle cocoa flavor.
Stuffed but unwilling to leave it behind, I packed what remained in a to-go carton.
The art scene in the ghost town of Rhyolite was our next sweet reward on the road to Death Valley. Established in 1984, the Goldwell Open Air Museum is the first roadside attraction upon entering town. The museum states a mission of preserving and encouraging “artistic exploration in, and of, the Amargosa Desert - an evocative landscape along the eastern edge of Death Valley National Park.”