You know them as truck stops or greasy spoons or roadside diners. You seek them out for a Denver omelet or a cheeseburger or a chicken-fried steak. You know these easy-exit institutions are part of the fabric of the American car culture, yet their numbers are fleeting as they are replaced by big chain diners.

Because my son lives in the Puget Sound area, I frequently travel up and down the Interstate 5 corridor between Salem and Seattle. I’ve made it a goal to take note of restaurants with character that warrant a pit stop, spots I can easily reach from the freeway, where I can get a satisfying meal and a friendly conversation, then proceed on my way.

From north to south, these are some of my favorites.

Galloping Gertie’s

Near Fort Lewis at the Madigan Hospital exit (Exit 122, 12 miles south of the Tacoma Dome) in Washington is Galloping Gertie’s. The restaurant was founded in 1952 by a woman who liked to eat as much as she liked to play the horses, or so the story goes.

Gertie was a regular at the old Longacres racetrack on the south side of Seattle. When she opened the restaurant, she incorporated a scoreboard giving odds on each horse in a race, surrounding it with dozens of framed photographs of some of her favorite ponies. More than half a century later, they remain on the walls, along with a memorial to Fort Lewis soldiers killed in Iraq.

If you visit today, odds are you’ll be served by Stacy Kelly, a 2001 Mountain View High School graduate who was lured to the area by a brother and a boyfriend in the Army. The last time I dropped by, she served me bacon, eggs and hash browns and kept my coffee cup filled.

Gertie’s daughter and son-in-law have the restaurant today. They keep it open early until late, and the adjoining cocktail lounge provides liquid sustenance for those overnighting nearby.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the restaurant shares a nickname with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which buckled in spectacular fashion in one of this country’s most famed bridge collapses in 1940. It became known in legend as “Galloping Gertie.”

The Little Red Barn

Country-and-western bands provide entertainment on weekend nights in the lounge at the Little Red Barn, a restaurant that could not be more aptly described: Indeed, it occupies a small red barn.

Located in the community of Grand Mound, Wash., at the Rochester exit (Exit 88, six miles north of Centralia), right at the edge of lush farmland, this 24-hour cafe has two spacious dining rooms — one of them with a fireplace and a salad bar — and the busy bar. (If you miss the weekend, there’s karaoke most other nights.)

I ordered fish and chips on my most recent visit. It wasn’t fresh fish, of course; this is no seafood-specialty restaurant. But I had three good breaded filets on a generous bed of french fries, with cups of tartar and cocktail sauce on the side, a tall Pepsi and a big smile from the waitress.

One more reason that you may want to get off the freeway at Grand Mound is that, less than a mile away, is the Great Wolf Lodge. If you have not heard of this family waterpark resort and adjoining conference center, get ready: Your kids will soon know all about it. It officially opens to the public Monday.

Built at a cost of more than $100 million on 39 acres, Great Wolf feels a little bit like Disneyland (more specifically, like Disney’s California Adventure Park) in the Northwest. The Great North Woods theme carries through an eight-story lodge with restaurants like the Loose Moose Cottage, and a waterpark with three pools (one of them is a huge wave pool), six slides and a six-story extreme tube ride, the Howlin’ Tornado. Everything is indoors and kept at a constant 84 degrees. The park is connected to a 30,000-square-foot conference center, so mom or dad can bring the whole family and keep the kids entertained as they work.

Great Wolf’s parent company, based in Madison, Wis., operates 11 other resorts, mainly in the Midwest. This one is a joint project with the Chehalis tribe.

Mrs. Beesley’s Burgers

Looking for a good hamburger? Look no further than Mrs. Beesley’s, a small cafe on the east side of I-5 at the Toledo/ Vader exit (Exit 59, 18 miles south of Chehalis).

There’s nothing remarkable about the establishment itself, but the kitchen has burgers down to a fine art. Thick and juicy beef is dressed with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, a homemade sauce and served on a toasted bun. Order it with onion rings and a root beer.

If you’re feeling spiritual about your sandwich, I suggest taking your Mrs. Beesley’s burger to go as you explore the unique Gospodor’s Monument Park, several miles north. A trio of 100-foot-high copper memorials that honor Holocaust victims, American Indians and Mother Teresa, this personal statement by Seattle engineer Dominic Gospodor has attracted the attention of northbound freeway travelers since construction began several years ago. There are spires, spheres and an image of Jesus with his arms outstretched.

Gospodor, who’s 81, isn’t done. He has plans for additional monuments: to the victims of drunken drivers to those who endured slavery to suffragette Susan B. Anthony and to polio-vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk. The grounds are still undeveloped, but if you’re willing to drive on some back roads, you can park outside the gate (on Camus Road just north of Drew’s Prairie Road west of Toledo) and walk to the base of the monuments.

Carrigg’s Columbia Inn

Elvis Presley has eaten at Carrigg’s Columbia Inn in Kalama, Wash. So has Jack Benny. And it doesn’t stretch the imagination too far to think that D.B. Cooper also has been among the patrons. It wasn’t far from here, after all, that the notorious bank robber disappeared into night skies over Lake Merwin in the late 1970s.

Facing the interstate in downtown Kalama between exits 27 and 30, the restaurant has been fully renovated since I first stopped in around 1980. Today, it has got a pair of contemporary dining rooms at the front of the restaurant and its classic Chinook Room lounge at the rear.

I had a Southern-fried chicken dinner (a full, half chicken) with mashed potatoes and a dinner salad on one recent evening visit. And my charming waitress even twisted my arm to convince me to finish with an apple pie, a la mode.

As for the celebs, well, Benny paid a visit in the mid-1950s. My server told me that he stopped for dinner en route to a singing engagement in Portland, and that he borrowed the restaurant’s telephone to call his wife and let her know how his tour was going. (This was, after all, long before cell phones.)

Presley paused with his entourage in 1962 en route to Seattle, where he was filming “It Happened at the World’s Fair.” I imagine him thanking the wait staff after the meal: “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

And Cooper? I like to imagine that he dropped in — literally — after stashing his parachute behind a Douglas fir somewhere up the Kalama River.

The Alibi

Strictly speaking, The Alibi isn’t an interstate cafe. But it is just a few blocks off I-5 (west of exit 303) in North Portland, and it has an Interstate Avenue address. In fact, it dates from the 19th century, when it was a horse-and-buggy stop known as the Chat and Nibble.

A tiki bar par excellence, The Alibi has changed very little in the six decades since it reopened with a tropical theme in 1947. Trader Vic would have been proud. In this blast from the past, the servers all wear Hawaiian shirts, painted Day-Glo hula dancers wiggle their way along one wall, and tiki gods flash their burning-ember eyes. Diners sit in cane chairs, surrounded by faux palm trees beneath seashell lampshades, sipping their umbrella drinks.

This is all great fun, but as a nonsmoker, I prefer an early dinner. The coconut shrimp aren’t bad at all, and the Hawaiian pineapple burgers are actually pretty good. Later in the evening, however — when guests’ attention is divided between the video-poker machines and the nightly karaoke fest — the room fills with cigarette smoke. I recommend dropping by for the experience, but unless you’re into the bar scene, not staying late.

Country Pride

If you remember Jake’s Diner on South Third Street in Bend, before it relocated to the city’s east side a few years back, you understand the mood of this truck stop. It’s part and parcel of the Portland Travel Center at Donald/Aurora exit 278, 22 miles north of Salem’s Market Street exit and 10 miles south of the I-205 interchange at Tualatin.

Unlike my other favorite truck stops, this is not a family operation. Travel Centers of America owns the establishment, a major stop on the route between San Francisco and Seattle. Dozens of trucks line up for diesel and additional service as their drivers enjoy a square meal, a hot shower and an opportunity to do a bit of laundry. There’s a TV lounge, a video-game room and a convenience store with a travel center where you can buy items ranging from snack food to maps to mud flaps.

The Country Pride Restaurant seats probably a couple of hundred people. Service is prompt, and the food isn’t bad for this sort of eatery.

The last time I passed through, I sat at the counter and tackled a generous order of chicken-fried steak and eggs. The meal was so filling, I didn’t need to make a stop for lunch at any of my other favorite greasy spoons on the way north. I still haven’t decided if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.