December Vacation - Day 4

The day started off great and went downhill as the day progressed.

We got the car loaded and checked out around 11am. All the fog had disappeared, and it was a lovely day. We drove about 100 yards to the casino where we played for a while with not much success, a revolving theme to this bank-account-draining misadventure. We headed to the lunch buffet and enjoyed our fill of the many items, good service, and at a reasonable price. I'm having to watch my pennies at this point, you know.

We got back to the car and programmed the GPS for Tyler, Texas, where I thought our friend Roy lived, only later to discover through a phone call that he actually lived in Longview, which was basically in the same area. We drove highway 69 all the way, and it was irritating as it constantly changed speed limits as we passed through every podunk town in our path. It was fatiguing.

We arrived at our friend's apartment and had a nice visit for about 30 minutes. My plan was to stay the night in Longview, then head south through East Texas meandering our way back to Houston. After the visit we decided to go ahead and drive another hour to Shreveport and go to the Horseshoe Casino, which I originally decided not to do. I should have stayed with the original plan. We got to the casino, got our players cards, and quickly discovered that the huge hotel and casino sign outside were making up for the fact that the actual playing area inside is very small, had old machines, was kinda dirty, the machines were tight, and was a big disappointment for both of us. To demonstrate how money-grabbing these casinos have gotten, this casino has now discontinued giving the first-time guest a cheap plastic tether cord for the new players card. We were welcome to purchase a cord in the gift shop. What a waste of time and gas. We only stayed about 45 minutes and promptly left.

It's really been like that at all the casinos we have visited this week. No comps, very small discounts, if any, etc. It's gotten really bad. At this point I don't ever plan on going on anymore vacations for the sole purpose of gambling. If we see one along the way during a future trip somewhere, we might stop.

Maybe.

We'll see.

We got back to the car and headed down the freeway to find a place to stay for the night. We checked a few places and finally settled on the Howard Johnsons. As I have discovered on many occasions, a low price usually means low expectations. I'll throw hundreds of dollars to the wind at a casino, but when it comes to a hotel, I'm a major tightwad. I'll search and search to find the best deal, and that low price always comes with irritants, such as the case with our selection this evening. The back security door doesn't work. All the sprinklers were on around the property with most of them damaged and shooting in the air like Old Faithful. The building, sidewalks, and many customer vehicles were getting watered more than the grass. Once in the room, the air conditioner is barely working. I have it on "high fan" and it's barely blowing any air at all, and no, it's not frozen up. Lawrence already made that suggestion.

Tomorrow I plan on somewhat bee-lining it to Houston by way of East Texas and doing some antiquing along the way. I can't buy anything of course since I now have $27 to my name until payday. We'll just browse, thank you. I have a new iPhone 6+ waiting for me when I get home, along with my own bed and thankfully no casinos for hundreds of miles in any direction. The further away they are, the better.

As some of you know, I drive part-time for Uber now, and I'm gonna need to do a lot more driving to recover from my losses on this trip. $800 could have gone to a lot better use, like a trip to London to visit friends, or fly to California and visit my brother. Oh, wait, they have casinos in California. Scratch that.