Traveling Around - Couple Days At Rising Star Casino - Southern Indiana

We left home on Friday morning and drove to Cincinnati. We'd stay at my brother's on Friday and Saturday nights, attend a couple family reunions, and go on to Rising Star Casino at Rising Sun, IN, on Sunday evening. The reunions - one day maternal and one day paternal - were big successes.

We got to Rising Star about 4 PM on Sunday. We enjoy the lodge which is across the parking lot from the main buildings and the internal corridor to the river and the casino. Our room was much nicer than I remember the rooms as being - stocked, however, with a minimal amount of coffee for the coffee maker and some small number of shampoos and conditioners.

I didn't hang around the room but made my way via the shuttle to the casino. As with most of the riverboats, it is on multiple levels and you enter on the 2nd level. One section of that level has table games and one section slots. The table game area does have two multiple player video blackjack machines and a multiple player video roulette game.

I can never completely resist the video blackjack so I sat down and pulled a $100 bill out of my stash and put it in the machine. Almost like magic, at $5 a whack, the machine turned my $100 into $70. Then it changed and I was suddenly (after two blackjacks) back up to $95. Perhaps I was tired from the activities of the past few days and the trip from Michigan, but I lost interest and cashed out after seeing it dwindle back down to $80.

At Rising Star, the lowest level is non smoking. It also happens to be where most of the video poker machines reside. I headed there. I'd tried to read on the internet about the best games available and it appeared that there should be a 50 play machine that had double double bonus on it that paid 98+%. It wasn't difficult to find and was vacant so I sat down and put my $80 ticket in.

It was a little strange. Denominations were 1, 5, and 25 cents. I jumped around on the machine denominations and played multiple penny hands or singular nickel or quarter hands. I didn't last very long there before I was even more tired than at the video blackjack. One hand that was startling, however, was at the penny level when I was dealt 3 aces. The draw gave me 2 hands with a kicker and the machine racked up a bunch of credits that were not too meaningful at only a penny a credit. However, since I am past the point of trying to win all their money, I was happy with the fun I was having.

I cashed out my ticket, drawing closer to the $100 I had pulled from my stash. Went over to a bank of machines that I remembered that had a reasonable (but not full pay) deuces wild and jacks or better games. I played for about an hour, alternating between the two games as I tired of one or the other. At quitting time, I had 90.05 on the meter so cashed the ticket in one of the machines and went back to the room for r&r.

We slept in on Monday and snacked on some breakfast bars when we got up. Had decided previously that we'd like to see Madison, Indiana, and drove the 1 1/2 hours to get there. Wandered around the downtown area for a bit. Stopped in a winery and tasted their wares. One taste struck our fancy so we bought a bottle and were told to be sure and treat it like a new born puppy - DO NOT LEAVE IT IN A CAR IN THE SUMMER SUN. We tried to obey as we headed back to the casino.

We did make an additional stop in Vevay, IN, and went to the local historical museum. It was a smaller museum in two buildings. After we located the person in charge, she talked to us quite a bit about the various exhibits and after we had exhausted the starting building, locked it up and took us across to the second building where she continued the dialogue. She left us alone to explore for a bit before we started getting hungry and wanted to head back to Rising Sun and one of our favorite restaurants.

We got there with great anticipation only to find a sign on the door saying that the restaurant had a shortage of personnel and were closing at 2 PM. It was 2:30 so we were out of luck. We knew of a grocery there in Rising Sun with a good deli so we stopped, bought some fried chicken and fried mushrooms and feasted on it in our room with a bottle of wine from Michigan. We kept our purchased bottle to bring back home with us.

Both of us traipsed over to the casino and I sat for a few minutes at the 50 play machine while Sharon found a jacks or better single play machine nearby. After not too long I decided to change to a jacks or better play machine and moved on.

One of the machines that tempted me (I resisted) was a 2 cent "dream card" machine. I'd played it once before with frustrating results but on that trip my sister in law played it at the quarter level and used the dream card to hit a royal. If it hadn't been busy I probably would have tried it for a bit. But, I went to the single line jacks or better in a smaller dimly lit alcove. Played there until Sharon came by to say she'd had enough and I left to go back to the room with her. I was behind about $20 for the day.

Back in the room we watched television for a bit and I began to feel rested so up and at 'em. I got the shuttle back to the casino. Sharon stayed behind. I went back to the single play jacks or better/deuces wild machines and played for about 2 hours. No startling hands. No four deuces. No natural royal. I did see three wild royals and when I again got tired, I was about $30 to the good. I did some mental arithmetic and figured that if I called it $30, I would be 95 cents ahead for the trip. That sounded good so I called it an evening.

We were up Tuesday AM and on the road by about 8:30. As we passed through Cincinnati the thermometer on the car told us it was 96 degrees in the great outdoors. We didn't get out to check but kept on driving north. We were home by about 5 PM.

I'm no longer sure that an 8 hour day getting to the casino and an 8 hour day getting home from the casino isn't more than I want to do for 2 evenings at video poker. I believe in the future they probably will have to offer me something other than a free room to get me there for that short length of time.