Nevada is an arid state of the USA, lying between California and Utah. Most of the state is within the Great Basin, but parts of the northeast drain into the Snake River and the the southern portion is within the Mohave desert and the Colorado river drainage. Although the majority of tourists only visit Las Vegas, Reno and Tahoe to gamble, watch shows, and indulge themselves in food and drink, Nevada offers the more discerning traveler western frontier experiences verging on horse opera cliche, and landscapes utterly different from Europe, East Asia or more populated parts of North America. In this more primitive environment, gambling seems not so much a high-tech means of fleecing the overly optimistic as the direct descendent of the itinerant cardsharp. Legal brothels are another holdover, from the "soiled doves" of frontier times. It isn't that Nevadans approve, so much as they haven't gotten around to outlawing all of their history yet.