Yep. I took a road trip from Dallas to Bossier City, LA. In case you don’t know, Bossier City is just across the Red River from Shreveport, LA. And it has gambling casinos….lots of them! I am true to Caesar’s Group, so I stayed at The Horseshoe, a very nice resort located on the river. Actually, all of the casinos are on the river. Why? Because gambling (with a couple of exceptions like New Orleans) is only allowed on riverboats. The Horseshoe Casino is built as a “riverboat”, and they even start the engines once in a while as law requires. It is, however, attached solidly to the rest of the resort. It looks pretty funny, doesn’t it?
Heading east from Dallas is depressing given my Ohio born and bred sensibilities. Dallas could not be any flatter, or less appealing as you drive the labyrinth of expressways to get out of the city. Ugh. Concrete and more concrete. It is mid-May and the wildflowers are mostly gone, though a few remain as one drives farther east. The land around Dallas is dry, flat, with short trees…and although I left Ohio 30 years ago, I still miss the green, rolling hills and fields of cattle and crops…corn, wheat, tomatoes, strawberries, pumpkins…trees hundreds of years old; tall, reaching for the sky. My favorites were always the Blue Spruce pines. They are so beautiful, and huge, and yes, they really are blue-ish.
It gets better as one drives into East Texas. East Texas is filled with pine trees, none as tall and glorious as the Blue Spruce, but some pines are better than none. There are lakes, and taller trees, and even some inclines in East Texas! The green of East Texas is soothing and pretty heading toward Louisiana.
I spent two nights at the Horseshoe, and happily played video poker for hours and hours, leaving a winner! I was introduced to video poker when I was 23 years old, by my compulsive gambler mother (though she was not compulsive at the time because my dad was still alive and able to drag her away from her beloved slots). Of course, if he hadn’t been there she wouldn’t have left, so perhaps that compulsive gambler was always in there. Digression. I love poker, and hate the slowness of the poker tables, so video poker and I are happy companions. I have studied the statistics of the games, and adhere to my poker strategy. I was certainly lucky this time!
Like Kenny Rogers says, “you got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em”…and “I found an ace that I could keep”. Here are MY aces!
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