The Martin Hotel

The best road food stop yet was at the Martin Hotel in Winnemucca, Nevada. It had been a very long drive across barren country that day, and by the time I got to my hotel I didn't think I had it in me for any more adventure. But I was hungry and curious and when would I ever be back in Winnemucca again anyway?

Established in 1898, The Martin Hotel serves Basque meals family style. I was seated at a long table across from another lone traveler, a man in his 60's who had taken the bus from Las Vegas to try to get a job building a pipe line. He'd been working in construction in Vegas "til everything went bust," he said. The pipeline job was 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was hard work but he needed the job, he told me. He was staying in a rooming house where the owner had told him about the Martin Hotel.

A couple of locals ranchers sat next to us and soon we were all drinking red wine out of small carafes and digging into communal dishes of smokey beans, tarragon carrots, garlicky red mashed potatoes, chicken marsala, and bread pudding. They loved hearing about my road trip, and one of the ranchers told me a tip for driving through Nevada. "If there's a jack rabbit in the middle of the road you just have to hit it. You'll get yourself killed if you try to swerve around it. Whatever way you swerve that stupid rabbit will turn and run right back into you." He also told us we weren't too far from the Burning Man festival. "I don't have a problem with those kids running around naked up there and doing their thing, they can do whatever they want" he said. "What I have a problem with is they kick up so much dust that when it rains, it rains mud on my house for days."