Edinger's Filling Station in Pontiac, Illinois

A couple months ago my parents moved to central Illinois to live with my sister. It's really strange. For the past 13 years they've lived less than 10 minutes away and I saw them often. Before that they lived in the house I grew up in and when I got married, we bought a house about 20 minutes from them. So, for my whole life I never lived more than 20 minutes away from them. It's been an adjustment.

Since I work from home, I'm able to pretty much set my own hours and I have the flexibility of heading out for lunch. Dad would accompany me often for lunch at various places in the area. Sometimes we'd hit favorites of his, like Schoop's or Olive Garden or Fuddrucker's or Lincoln's or Miner Dunn. Other times we would try out new places I had been eyeing. If I was busy working and decided on a whim at 10:45 a.m. that I'd like to go out lunch at 11:30, I could always call up dad and he'd be ready to go. I really, really miss that.

Now he lives just over 2 1/2 hours away. In January, when his birthday was coming up I suggested we find a place in the middle where we could meet for lunch. We decided on Edinger's Filling Station in Pontiac and one of my sons came along to see Grandpa for a birthday lunch.

The place is adorable with a fun retro diner feel. It's open for breakfast and lunch with a large menu of classic diner food. The place was charming and very clean with a friendly staff. We all got something somewhat light and were all happy with our food. Dad had an order of biscuits and gravy, my son got spaghetti and I had some mac and cheese that was delicious.

The place was quite busy at lunchtime, but we just had to wait a couple minutes for a table to be cleared. It was so nice to linger at chat and see Dad for lunch again. We decided we'd continue our lunch dates about once a month in a place in between the two of us along I-55. We've had 3 lunch dates so far with another planned soon. Edinger's will definitely be a place we will revisit and I'd recommend it to anyone traveling I-55 through Pontiac or cruising the old Route 66.