Need a break from the casino action? Here are a few quick trips off the Strip, from museums to Mother Nature, compliments of Conde Nast Traveler.

At the ATOMIC TESTING MUSEUM, a mile east of the Strip, you get a simulation of an aboveground nuclear test, complete with trembling benches and blasts of air.

The NEON MUSEUM isn't a pretty sight. Its two junkyards, known collectively as The Boneyard and located about seven miles north of the Strip, are crammed with more than a hundred pieces of nonoperational-but still fabulous-signage.

In contrast to the Strip's glitz and glamour, HOOVER DAM, 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 along the Nevada-Arizona border, Hoover Dam is 726 feet high, 1,244 feet long, and 660 feet thick at the base.

Kids (and chocoholics) will love to visit ETHEL M CHOCOLATE FACTORY AND BOTANICAL CACTUS GARDEN, about ten miles east of the Strip, to see how the chocolatier's 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.

The recently-opened SPRINGS PRESERVE, a 180-acre cultural and historical attraction on the site of those springs, which dried up in 1962, aims to teach people about Vegas' past as well as get them to think about the future. The Springs Preserve, known as the birthplace of Las Vegas, is home to natural exhibits, galleries, trails and gardens that provide recreational and educational opportunities galore.

A 30-minute drive west of the Strip but worlds away is RED ROCK CANYON NATIONAL CONSERVATION AREA, in the 500-million-year-old red hills of the Las Vegas Valley. Locals adore Red Rock Canyon, the area's most sensational bit of nature, and they bike, hike, and drive through it year-round.