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 the
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
