Greetings from the sunny Southwest. OK, that's a joke, it has been
raining and even some sleet and snow in Tucson. We are spending part
of the winter here in our motorhome getting out of the Midwest cold,
and I understand there is plenty of cold to go around. We are parked
at son and daughter-in-law's place, great accommodations and they are
even furnishing a car to drive while we are here -- we just may not go
home. 
We took a side trip to the Casino Del Sol a few miles south of Tucson
on Pascua Yaqui Indian reservation. They have a great place to dry
camp (that's camping without hook-ups), a huge paved parking lot next
to an amphitheater. Many motorhomes and campers were taking advantage
of these facilities and the place looked like a used RV lot. But
there was plenty of room to spread out.
The casino is quite nice, rivals many of the Las Vegas casinos except
a bit smaller. There are plenty of full pay VP machines -- 9/6 JoB,
8/5 Bonus, and NSUD -- in 25 & 50 cent and $5. Oddly we didn't find
any full pay in $1. Most were in 3 or 5 play multi-denomination.
Unfortunately these machines also have 5, 10, 20 cent short pay games
and the bus loads of senior citizens occupy all the machines playing
one nickel at a time. The buses depart around 4:00 PM so frees up the
machines at that time.
When we walked in the door I headed straight to the promotion's booth
to convert a $50 coupon into a cash voucher (mailed to us based on
last year's visit). A host saw the coupon and got his attention,
guess they don't send out many $50 coupons. He took a quick look at
our play record and asked us if we wanted a comp to their best
restaurant. Of course we did and he wrote us an $80 comp for dinner
that evening. Said we spent a lot of money there and he was happy to
have us back. Well this is off to a good start, haven't even dropped
the first nickel yet and already have 50 bucks and a good comp. I
don't consider us high rollers but compared to the other gamblers in
this casino, I guess we are -- we certainly were treated as such.
We ended up dropping about $600 the first day so guess we paid for the
comp after all. Dinner was in Bellissimo Italian restaurant. Lucky
Lucy had lamb chops and I had steak and shrimp, both were excellent,
probably the best meals we have experienced in Arizona. Even with
dessert we didn't use up all the comp so our waitress insisted we take
a couple slices of cheesecake to go (also excellent). We had enough
leftovers for a good lunch the next day -- big advantage of traveling
with your own kitchen.
Day two we beat the senior citizens to the machines and had a pretty
good run. I shouldn't be dicing our elderly folks since we are too.
Hay this retirement stuff is great, wish I had started about 20
years sooner. We ended the day about $1100 to the good, most of which
came from Lucky Lucy's play on the $5 machines.
Impressed with the previous evening's meal we headed back to the booth
to get another Bellissimo comp. The boothling, after checking with a
host, wrote it out. Then remembered that Bellissimo was closed on
Tuesday night and wrote us out a $50 comp for the Tequila Factory,
told us to keep the other one as it was good for a month.
Another excellent meal but the menu items were priced so we couldn't
possibly use up all the comp. So we got a couple meals to go and
still only came to $38. I got a full slab of baby back ribs and again
had enough leftovers for a good lunch the next day.
Day three decided we would head back to Tucson but got the idea of
bringing son and DIL back for dinner some evening. Wonder if we can
squeeze another Bellissimo comp out of them. No problem, they were
happy to do so. (I am beginning to really like this place). We hit
the machines for a little play before heading out. Playing 5-play
NSUD I hit a non-deuce royal flush. This looked like a great place to
check out and hit the road. Lucky Lucy had another go at the $5
machines but lost a couple hundred this round.
Went back to the booth to check for cash back and got $95. We headed
out with our fridge full of food, pockets full of cash, and $160 in
future comps.
Rick and Lucky Lucy living the good life in the Southwest