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.

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!!