While Carson City offers has few architecturally-interesting buildings, it definitely serves up a whole lot of weird strip malls and open fields next to 5-lane, empty highways. Driving from Tahoe to Virginia City requires one to come out of the mountains into what is the “smallest metropolitan statistical area” in the country: Carson City. Lesson learned from our short visit: if you want to feel good about the “normality” and anti-suburban tendencies of your city, I would highly recommend a visit to the state capital of Nevada, and if you do, don’t forget a stop-off at these beautiful buildings.