Need a break from the casino action? Steve Friess reports on ten quick trips off the Strip

Ditch the dice. Take a break from the table. Say pshaw to the pool. Hoover Dam, museums, and a snowcapped mountaintop await pilgrims just off the Strip and in the southern Nevada desert, where nature's spectacle—and man's ingenuity—give all that neon a run for its money. Read on.

Atomic Testing Museum
Only in Vegas would a serious museum have a thrill ride. At this institution, a mile east of the Strip on East Flamingo Road, you get a simulation of an aboveground nuclear test, complete with trembling benches and blasts of air. One of the nation's first museums to focus on Cold War history, it has a collection that recalls the 928 nuclear tests that took place from 1951 to 1992 in the Nevada desert and examines their role in world events. Ignored, however, is the plight of thousands of Southwesterners who were poisoned by radioactive residue in the process (702-794-5151; www.atomictestingmuseum.org).

Ethel M Chocolate Factory and Botanical Cactus Garden
The chocolatier allows visitors into her factory, about ten miles east of the Strip, to see how the treats are made and packaged. Monitors explain the step-by-step process, and when guests exit the tour, they enter a cactus garden full of ocotillo, prickly pear, and other desert flora. What's encouraging about the factory is that it uses its wastewater—32,000 gallons a day—for irrigating the landscaping, making it a longtime corporate model in this desert valley. More important to chocoholics, though, is the fact that every visitor gets his or her pick of a free chocolate (702-433-2500; www.ethelm.com).

Hoover Dam
In contrast to the Strip's glitz and glamour, Nevada's other wildly popular attraction, about 30 miles to the southeast, is a brainy tribute to architectural and scientific accomplishment. Built in the 1930s on the Colorado River and the Nevada-Arizona border, Hoover Dam measures 726 feet high, 1,244 feet long, and 660 feet thick at the base. The Discovery Tour, which replaced the more impressive "hard hat tour" that was halted because of post-September 11 security concerns, is a nonetheless fascinating look at how electricity is generated and how engineers used 3.2 million cubic yards of concrete to hold back the Colorado River. Because the Southwest is in the throes of the worst drought on record, visitors can easily observe that Lake Mead, formed by the dam, is more than 75 feet below its normal level (866-291-8687; www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam).

Las Vegas Art Museum
It's no Art Institute of Chicago or New York's Museum of Modern Art, but the Las Vegas Art Museum, thanks to its affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution, frequently brings in fascinating exhibitions by both revered and obscure artists. Housed in the main branch of the local library (about eight miles west of the Strip, on West Sahara Avenue), the museum has monumental walls on which hang works from masters of the oversized canvas, such as Chinese-American painter Marlene Tseng Yu (702-360-8000; www.lasvegasartmuseum.org).