Deke Castleman, long-time senior editor at Huntington Press, Nevada guidebook writer, and frequent unnamed QoD contributor tackles this question, since he just took this drive last week.
I've done the road trip between Las Vegas and Reno more times than I care to remember, so for me, other than trying to set new speed records and playing the hairy cat-and-mouse game with the Highway Patrol and county sheriffs (especially lately, when they're out in force trying raise speeding-ticket revenues), it's fairly monotonous.
(On this most recent drive, I got lucky and managed to trail a car going 90 mph nearly halfway, so I went door to door in six hours and twenty minutes, which means averaging a little more than 70 mph, the speed limit on the highway. But that includes slowing down for towns, getting stuck behind trucks, and being a little cautious when I didn't have a speed demon ahead of me running interference for the radar traps. It wasn't quite my all-time top speed, six hours and ten minutes, but it was mighty close.)
At a leisurely pace, you'd want to allow upwards of eight hours to do the 450-mile drive straight through, and you could conceivably take two or three days to make the trip if you wanted to stop along the way to take in the sights.
As for scenic, I'd say it all depends on where you're coming from. If you live in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, or New Mexico, the Mojave/Great Basin desert topography and vegetation might not be too exotic or exciting. But if you've spent the last few years of your life commuting on the subway from the upper west side to the lower east side of Manhattan, you might find the wide-open spaces, succession of polychrome mountain ranges, huge sky, infrequent traffic, and a town every 25-100 miles to be the most beautiful trip you've ever taken.
Here's a brief travelogue.
The route takes you northwest up the western edge of Nevada on US 95. A half-hour north of Las Vegas you slow down for Indian Springs, a small settlement right outside Creech Air Force Base with a couple gas stations, a casino/restaurant, and lots of military all around. On a drive in March, the Air Force Thunderbirds, based out of Nellis AFB nearby, were practicing maneuvers at Indian Springs, so I stopped to watch the aerial entertainment (though it totally blew my time and I was a bit deafened by the end of it).
In another 30 miles is the turnoff to Mercury (no services), headquarters settlement for the Nellis Air Force Range, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository, and Area 51; it's off in the distance and you can't get near it without a security clearance, but it's something to look at and ponder for a few minutes as you drive past.
There, US 95 narrows to one lane in each direction. Still, it’s good smooth blacktop most of the way, so you don’t have to worry about a rough ride or damage to the undercarriage of your car or anything. To pass slower vehicles, however, you’ll have to do so in the oncoming lane, so if you’re nervous about passing, either plan on driving awhile behind slower vehicles or grit your teeth and cut around when you can. It's easier at night, when you can see headlights for miles.
Roughly 55 miles from Mercury is Beatty, which has two casinos, a couple of all-night gas stations, a ghost town, Rhyolite (1904-1909), a couple miles away. Rhyolite is worth a peek to take in the remains of the jail, school, bank, train depot, and especially the Bottle House, constructed in 1906 from 50,000 Busch beer bottles). About ten miles north of Beatty is Bailey's Hot Springs, with his and her bathhouses sheltering 105-degree pools.
From there, it’s a quick 55 miles to Goldfield, at one time (1910) the largest city in Nevada. The stone buildings (four-story hotel, three-story high school, elementary school, and telephone exchange, all defunct) attest to the size and grandeur of Goldfield in its heyday. Stop in for a look around the Esemeralda County Courthouse, one of
