Another winning casino stop

Back on the road yesterday morning, and headed for the Kickapoo Indian Casino just south of Eagle Pass. This was actually where we had planned on spending the night when we cut our driving day short because of the wind.

But we decided to stop in there anyhow, even though it was a very short detour to do so.

We stopped and got some gas at $2.20 USD per gallon ($0.77 CAD per liter), but only enough to get us to a place that is even cheaper.

We had heard the Kickapoo casino is fairly generous with their freebies, and were hoping for maybe a free meal in their buffet since it was close to lunchtime when we arrived there.

Not much in the way of scenery in this part of Texas.

We followed a helicopter through town!

We got to the casino, and actually had a hard time finding parking! Lots of empty space... but if you follow the signs for RV parking, they lead you to the RV Park... which is apparently only $15 a night for a full hookup site. Not bad, but we weren't staying... we were only there to collect the freebies.

Eventually we found our way to a parking spot that didn't have 8 ft high barriers at the entrance.

Really nice facility with a big hotel... in the middle of nowhere right against the Rio Grande and the Mexico border.

We made our way to the Players Club and signed up. The first freebie we got was a free night stay in their hotel! But it has to be booked within 30 days... so it's not going to do us any good.

Then, we had to go to a kiosk where we saw what casino prize we had won. Ruth got $40 worth of free play at the slot machines, and I got $20!

We sat at a couple of machines and managed to turn that $60 worth of free play into $19.50 USD ($26 CAD) cold hard cash!

We pocketed the money and ran.

It's been a very long time since we left a casino with less cash than we entered with. It's pretty tough to lose when you never gamble with your own money!

We then headed to the Chaparral Wildlife Management area. We've parked there a couple of times in the past. You're supposed to have a $12 USD annual pass, but we would only be using it for the night so its not really worth it even though it's only $12. So they've always said "sure, go ahead", but this time, the lady in the office had no sense of humor and wouldn't allow us to overnight unless we bought the pass. Oh well... if you don't ask, you don't know.

We ended up at a rest stop on the I-35 heading into Laredo. We hate overnighting in these types of places, but every now and then you just have to do it.

Noisy, with lots of truck traffic... but at least we had free wifi.

And, we met another one of our Mexico group. Single guy Garth was there with his Trek motorhome. We've actually been on the same route for the past couple of days and we had passed him once, and he had passed us once. This time, we managed to say hi to each other!

And we met Brian and Kathy from Vancouver while we were at Seminole Canyon State Park. They will also be traveling with us to Mexico.

Yesterday's drive 234 miles (374 kms).

And happy birthday to the better half of this traveling duo... it is Ruth's special day today!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Super cheap price on a 3,300 watt emergency generator. Probably too loud for camping, but for power outages at home it would be great...

3,300 watt Emergency Generator

And in Canada...

Check out the deals at Amazon.ca