T A Redding Travel Center

They have everything you could ask for when traveling. Drinks, snacks, hot/​cold food, clean restrooms, showers?! Tight!

I really like the TA stops. This one has self pay showers! Never seen this before at any of the other ones. Didn’t try, but neat idea.

Good gas prices and cheap tobacco!

First visit as a local. breakfast pork cutlet was tough, wifes eggs over easy not done. The coffee was great, hash browns cold. we will return but will wait until 7:00 am for the breakfast buffet. The best parts of our visit were the place is spotlessly clean and the waitress (Brenda) was as good as they get

Good place to grab a nice stretch and possibly some food if you are driving to North or just coming down from the Klamath-​Siskiyou mountains from Medford or Klamath Falls, OR.

My last Popeye’s experience was at this Travel Center truckstop/​ultra-​minimart place with a Popeye’s Express and a Pizza Hut Express. We were only two hours into a 9-​hour drive from Sacto to Portland for last year’s SMMR BMMR garagepunk music festival, and we were trying to make it to PDX by 1am after getting in a full day’s work at the office. So, I really only wanted to stop twice on the way at the most, and I figured it’d be best to gas up, eat, piss, and buy snacks all at one stop. TA’s afford a perfect opportunity to do this, and because the area between Redding and Ashland has exorbitant gasoline prices at every pump, we knew we would be paying competitive rates for petrol.
Both Popeye’s and Pizza Hut here were way overpriced compared to normal stand-​alone locations. And the food was even more half-​assed. I had a jambalaya bowl. What a joke! It was like week-​old leftovers reheated for $ 7. My girlfriend faired worse with her menu choice of chicken strips. The next seven hours on the road was pretty difficult, especially as we twisted through the canyons of the upper Sacramento, the Rogue, and the Umpqua.
Lesson learned… always top off the gas tank in Sacto, and then take your gas/​piss/​meal/​snack pit-​stop at the 76 in Wolf Creek, OR. There is no better rural deli experience north of the Mobil station in Lee Vining, CA, than the Wolf Creek 76.
The only worthwhile part of that pitstop was while people-​watching, we spotted this hilarious goth-​a-​lette teenage girl with a couple inbred-​lookin’ parents who seriously resembled characters from Gary Larsen’s «Far Side» comics. She ordered a full meal from both Popeye’s and Pizza Hut and gorged her face while her mom yelled «YOU’RE GONNA GET FAT!» as if she wasn’t too late. The dad had this look like life kept running him over in a truck, and he was just hoping the next time would end it all. I gotta totally creeped out vibe when I made eye contact with the girl. It was like «Yeah, I see your girlfriend there… I don’t care!» and she shifted in her seat to splay her legs open.
On 2^nd thought, maybe it wasn’t the Popeye’s that made me sick!
I grabbed a triple-​tall-​can of Rockstar Recovery Lemonade for the road and never looked back.

They got it all…

Stopped here for a quick supper. Menu prices at Popeye’s and Pizza Hut are much too expensive. The owner is gouging travelers.

Fairly clean washrooms. Okay gas prices. Decent selection of food in the aisles. Nothing special. Just a pit stop on the highway through life.

One of the weirder TA’s. Not real clean, and a funky crowd sometimes… but, I never feel unsafe or anything like that. I would not avoid the place if I had to stop.

Not the cleanest of the TA Travel Center and bit older. On the plus they had a Popeye’s chicken inside and arcade. Good break if your on the road or need to take a leak.

Thanks to my Dad, I’m predisposed to drive long distances with minimal stops. Growing up, we were a family of strong bladders and a taste for the road, as we traveled by car and camper. I think our single day record was from Estherville Iowa to Pueblo Colorado. Or maybe it was Wheeling West Virginia…
My own family driving twist is to go «Running on Empty» and buy gasoline only at the last possible moment. Although no one else remembers it that way, I fondly recall pulling into a service station near Omaha and gliding the car to the pumps on fumes.
Surprisingly, Gayle doesn’t appreciate this kind of quirkiness and on our recent way to Ashland, insisted that I pull into the TA Redding Travel Center for a fill-​up. And even though I had a good 10 miles left on the tank, I gladly pulled in because it was a truck stop and a little Shalom Bayit (especially for Newlyweds) is a good thing.
After recently visiting the Iowa I-​80 Truckstop, this place seems kind of small and seems to lack some of the trucker space that I enjoy. However, this TA Travel Center is conveniently located to I-​5, the price at the pump was competitive and if you’re hungry, there’s a Popeye’s, Pizza Hut, and Country Pride inside. And soon enough, we were back on the road and looking forward to the next 137 miles.