A lunch almost 40 years in the making!

In the olden days before iPhones, mobile Internet, and Yelp, Diane and I used to rely on The Interstate Gourmet to find places to eat on the highway. We carried the book with us on road trips and were usually happy with the restaurants it recommended.

I was really intrigued by one restaurant, Nancy’s Airport Cafe. I’m not sure why – the review wasn’t exactly glowing – but every time we drove past it on I-5, I thought about stopping there. It never happened – the timing wasn’t right, or we’d just eaten, or we were in too much of a hurry, or….

Until today. We were on our way home from our overnight stop in Redding and had stopped at the Willows Rest Area just before lunchtime. I pulled up Yelp and looked for a nearby restaurant, and Nancy’s topped the list. Recent reviews were promising, so we decided to give it a try. Diane had the Greek Salad with chicken, and I had the Beefeater with a green salad. Yummy!

After lunch, we walked the twenty steps to the airport and admired a few planes; we could have walked over to any of them and climbed in!

And then it was back on the road for the rest of the trip home.

On the road again

We’re on a short road trip to see four plays at Oregon Shakespeare Festival (King Hedley II, Yellow Face, Henry IV Part One, and Smote This!). We saw a preview of Henry VI Part One in June and enjoyed it so much we wanted to see it again; the other plays hadn’t started during our previous visit.

We’re also trying a new (to us) hotel and chain, the Comfort Suites in Redding. It’s substantially less expensive than our usual haunt, the TownePlace Suites by Marriott, and so far, it’s been fine.

The drive up was amazingly smooth – there was only one spot where we hit stop-and-go traffic, on 680 right after the Benecia Bridge. Traffic was backed up for several minutes before we reached a sign claiming that the right lane was “closed ahead” – but the blockage cleared as soon as we passed the sign, and the right lane was never closed. Go figure.

We were unadventurous in our dining choices today, visiting two of our perennial favorites, the Clay Oven in Vacaville for lunch and Final Draft Brewing in downtown Redding for dinner. I wanted something sweet after dinner, so we walked from our hotel to the 32 Below ice cream parlour (the ice cream was quite sweet). On the way back, I noticed that there was a nice crescent moon, and I was curious how my new camera would handle it.

Moon over Redding

I’m pretty happy with the result (Lightroom’s AI-assisted denoise helped) – you can see the craters along the terminator. Not bad for a handheld photo!