Casino Rankings and Trip Talk

This information might be useful if you're planning on doing a "Rancheria Run" Northern Cali to the Oregon/Washington Border.

PJ and Penzy's 5 star list also includes these additions:

CC = good car camping

F = Good food in casino

P = Good payouts (for those who don't gamble much this means what you put in if you win comes back to you substantially)

S = A good setting or where the casino is located is a rare or pretty site

So here goes:

Across the Golden Gate Bridge from the south

1) F * River Rock Casino, Geyserville, CA Dry Creek Pomo Rancheria

2) CC,F,P *** Coyote Valley, Hwy 20 E. CA Pomo Rancheria

3) CC*(Arcata Motel6 nice/nearby), F+ ** Blue Lake, CA -- Wiyot+ Rancheria

4) CC,S,F *** Cher ae Heights, Trinidad, CA -- Yurok, Wiyot, Tolowa

5) * Sherwood Valley, Willits, CA -- Pomo Rancheria

6) F, CC, P, ** Elk Valley, Crescent City, CA -- Tolowa Rancheria (nice website)

7) F, CC, S, P, *** Lucky 7, Crescent City,CA -- Tolowa of Smith River Rancheria

8) S, F,(nice Motel6 nearby) * The Mill, Coos Bay, OR -- Coquille Rancheria

9) CC, S, ** 3 Rivers, Florence, OR lower Umpqua, Siuslaw Rancheria

10) S, F, CC, P **** Chinook Winds, Lincoln City, OR Chinook

11) S,F, ** Lucky Eagle, Washington State, Ottawa lower Elwha Klallam

12) CC-, S, * Seven Feathers, Canyonville, OR, Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe

13) CC, F=, P,S, **** Bear River, Rhonerville, CA(near Eureka) Cahto Tribe

13 1/2) (no players club very small) * Red Fox Laytonville, CA


So there you have it!

Best of Luck! Join the players club to get player points

Set the track now ride the rails, like surfriding, just mark your way and go for it!

And check out Pet Friendly Belknap Hot Springs. 541-822-3512 65 miles east of Eugene, beautiful setting, great camping, inexpensive, nice deviation, cabins avail. #2,#3 allow pets.

Lucky Finale

Fourteen days and thirteen and a half casinos! All of them owned and run by various bands of California and Oregon Indian tribes, five star ratings are forthcoming by Penzy and PJ. Yet let it be said for now, the smaller the casino (with no hotel attached) had the best payouts.

And for the 85 year old wild child, good-sized payouts were had!!!

But sometimes you got to stop and catch up! Not saying Penzy ever outright said she was tired or wanted to come home. Nope. Not a single complaint. Not until day twelve PJ cranked the volume of the CD in the Saturn. Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs. (Thanks Mitch) The only tunes played throughout the trip. A sort of opus for the journey, mellow, contemplative, stimulating to the senses...

"No, not more plink plink plink!" Penzy begged.

As PJ had to laugh until her belly ached!



Food Booze Snooze...appropriately phrased along the Redwood Hwy, at Patrick Creek Lodge of all places, not that we slept here but we dug the signage! Especially as a match to Norma's Ocean Diner (Seaside, Oregon)



Nevertheless, the journey continued after the surf session at Cape Kiwanda, reeling from the scenic beauty of side-of-the-road sweet peas and giant trees, radiant fox glove, brilliant white queen anne's lace, and wild roses. Driving to Kelso, Washington, across the Columbia River was but another reminder of Eddie Vedder's song, "Can't Keep"

It's true, experiencing stunning beauty at the same time reflecting the raw open claim that gave Lewis and Clark the travails of a lifetime, PJ for a moment only wanted "a last breath I don't let out."

Yet arriving at Cousin/Niece Linda June and husband Ken's place, there was sweet celebration and coincidence. Linda was going in for her first colonoscopy the following day! (Reminder to all aged 50+ have you had yourself checked? Early detection can avoid serious complications! This message brought to you from one who knows!!!)
And it turned out to be all good, just like our visit! Nostalgia ruled and reminiscing fueled laughter and much needed rest (no matter what Penzy said!)
And Penzie, aka Auntie June, was bear hugged


(now isn't that the best kind of luck?)

And got to hear something other than Eddie Vedder's plink plink plink




While Macky hung out with gentle Sebastian PJ got to serve some grub to Ken in his enviable "man cave" until it was time to get on the road again.






Sweet remembrances...











BUT HEY! Not enough surfriding, PJ would note, and they hadn't taken the mailboat ride up the Rogue River as Kevin highly suggested, due to not wanting to leave Macky behind for too long, but did somebody say HOT SPRINGS? PJ's pick, along the McKenzie River is Belknap Hot Springs, between Bend and Eugene.




Sweeeeet! Parking lot snacks and a long cool drink of Oregon water...Keeping it real. At least until arriving at the next casino

...to play more ridiculous slot games, fix up a martini from the trunk, with hope of a Guinness on tap at the bar, and dancing to a band playing Neil Young songs in a lounge where no one knows your name and by 2 am it's time once again to hit the sack (or seat)

Truth is, following My Mother the Car


whether car camping, sharing meals, cheering each other on as the wheel turns, laughing at the silliest moments... it's all such fun. Like another road trip taken years before. PJ aka Shel and daughter Iya at age 15, booking across country to NYC and back, in a swift but memorable ten days. XO

Adventure is in who you're making memories with. Son Nate surely would agree.

And now...


Thanks dear Candy for the welcome home gift!

Yes. Harmony.

"Adventure!" adds Penzy.

"Always," PJ agrees.

For luck always rides along in the memory making....

Any questions? ShelbyMahan@gmail.com

Or we'll see ya out there, on the road.

Live Love Laugh Luck

Without much time to write it can blow your mind the way things turn out. Sure, we've got cute soft little friends riding backseat with Macky, mascots of luck for Penzy and PJ in Lincoln City, Oregon.

Oh, such a run! Penzy's luck returned again! While PJ played craps and retained, unfortunately not the cash she laid down on the table, but a half way decent time holding the dice.

Breakfast as Wildflowers Restaurant, a kick butt tex mex scramble and sharing a table with a group of joke telling musicians from Portland provided laughs... "How do you spell silk? S-I-L-K. What do cows drink? ...."

Thanks to our sponsors...Happy 4th, 5th, 6th of July...





The profound thing, after tired from car camping in the casino parking lot (Where from our "room window" we had a peek of the ocean!


We headed on up the coast while the weather was holding. Rode some steep shore grinders at a quite crowded Cape Kiwanda. The wind was kind. The pale ale at the Pelican Pub even kinder.



Where to now?
On the way to Kelso, Washington to visit PJ's cousin Linda June, (Penzy's niece)


Going to bridge the family, take care of our loved ones, we'll write more soon!

Love to you all. Keep us in your good thoughts.

June and Shel aka Penzy and PJ and Macky!!! Roadtripping.

Riding in on the waves of luck

It might be true luck comes in waves. And so might love. And seal pups to the shore here in Lincoln City, Oregon.

On the road we've stopped to day camp and eat oatmeal cooked over our single burner stove. Take in the gorgeous views. Check the surf. A swell was up yesterday. South Jetty Newport was temptuously big. Devil's Punch bowl up the road was blown out by the time we arrived but Macky and PJ took a dip anyway.




Lincoln City is an old beachy tourist town sporting Chinook Winds Casino. Our last couple of stops have shrunk our fun tickets, but we ain't complaining. Just get out there and wait for another wave, right?


Motel life feels so mundane compared to the excitment of sleeping "out". Sure our bones be aching a bit. Sure we get crabby cuz of it. Crabby? Oh, well, yeah, lets see, how about a Fresh Crab Dinner last night! GOAL!

A little bit about the Chinook name:

When the first European ship sailed into the river and anchored eight miles above the mouth, offshore from proud Qwatsamts, a three-row village, the mariners wanted to know what to call the people. One sailor asked some sort of question, in some approximation of language, pointing at the village. Something like "What are these people called?" Pointing, by the way, was dangerous and ill-mannered among these people. A headman or spokesman responded Chinoak or Tsinuk or something like that. Forever after, the white people called the people in that village, and three or four others along the riverbank nearby, Chinook or Chinooks. (The river people at first called the strangers tlohonnipts, "those who float [or drift] ashore.")

After a while, when they learned that the people upriver for a couple of hundred miles had roughly the same languages, the tlohonnipts called them Chinook too. Years later, all canoe-paddling Indians on the North Pacific Coast were sometimes referred to as Chinooks. All that, based on no more than what some person answered when strangers impolitely pointed toward the village of long cedar-plank houses, row on row along the shore, which town they called Qwatsamts.

Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark would put down as the name of a supposed Kiksht-Chinook-speaking tribe the response "he pointed at me."

Tsinuk was what the Chehalis, who lived to the north and spoke an entirely different language, called the village or villagers, or some of the river people Chinook, or perhaps Chin people. For though it is probably only a coincidence, the suffix ooks or uks meant plural people in the Chinook language. So it is possible, though unlikely, that the people were really called the Chin, and Chinooks meant more than one Chin person. Of such shadows are names made, when strangers with no common language first meet. Personally, I favor Chin for its simplicity and the feel of it against the roof of my mouth, Tchinn.
from Rick Ruben

Finally, here's a dungeness crabber hard at work. Work is often play and play, work. It's balance, Penzy says at 85 years old, chomping at the bit for PJ to finish this, so she can go play herself!!