Hell's Kitchen, Jackpots and a Blizzard: Our Trip to Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe
Saturday, January 11 to Friday, January 17, 2020

Happy New Year!!!

Every year in January, Val and I get away for a week and take a trip to Lake Tahoe in Northern California.  It gives us a chance to unwind and relax after the hectic Christmas season, do some gambling and enjoy some good food.  I usually don't write a blog post about it, but this year there were a few things that were a bit out of the ordinary for us that I decided were worthy of writing about.

Including gas and meal stops, it is about a seven hour drive to South Lake Tahoe from our home.  The last part of the trip is on highway 50 through the Sierras, which can be treacherous in the winter due to ice and snow.  Because of that, we always leave a day early to both avoid having to drive through the mountain passes late in the day or at night, and also gives us a longer first day in Lake Tahoe.  We usually spend the night just east of Sacramento in the town of El Dorado that has a hotel we like adjoining a shopping area that has several restaurants that we also like.  That leaves us with only a two hour drive to Lake Tahoe (assuming the weather is OK) and we are usually there before noon.

The drive from El Dorado to South Lake Tahoe was easy as the weather was good and the road was free of snow.  Traffic was light going in our direction, but quite heavy going in the other direction (west) as it was Sunday and a lot of people were returning home after a ski weekend.  As we crossed the last pass before heading down to the Lake, we were very glad we weren't going the other direction as we came upon and overturned vehicle in the westbound lane and westbound traffic had come to a complete stop.  It didn't appear that anyone was injured, but it had just happened so there was no traffic control and westbound traffic was backed up for miles almost all the way to South Lake Tahoe.  Thank goodness we were heading east!

We always stay at Harrah's Hotel and Casino which is just across the California / Nevada stateline in Stateline, Nevada.  We arrived just after noon and were pleased to find our room was ready so were settled in and having lunch before 2:00.  After lunch we spent some time in the casino without much luck before returning to our room to relax a bit before dinner.

Twilight time from our window with the Sierras and Lake Tahoe in the background.

We had a dinner at TaCo which is a kind of sports bar like place that serves Mexican food where the food is surprisingly good.  After dinner we had the first big surprise of the trip.

Jackpot

We returned to the casino with for a little gambling before calling it a night and decided to try our luck at the Megabucks slot machine.  If you're not familiar with Megabucks they are slot machines that are linked throughout Nevada with a common progressive jackpot that gets quite large over time until some lucky person wins and then it is reset $10,000,000.  The jackpot is currently at $14,000,000 so a very tidy sum.

Every trip Val and I each put in a twenty dollar bill and try for the big jackpot.  The odds are tremendously against us, but we figure that somebody has to win so why not us.  The machine we were playing was a $1 machine with a maximum bet of $3 (you have to bet max in order to win the big megabucks jackpot).  In order to win you need the 3X, 4X and 5X megabucks symbols to line up consecutively.

We played for a bit and won a little and our $40 investment was up to $46, nothing to get to excited about .  On our next spin the 3X symbol showed up in the first column and we both froze, could it be?  No, unfortunately a red seven came up next and our hopes for $14,000,000 was dashed, but to our great surprise, in the last column a 5X symbol came up - we had just won 15 times $150 (three red sevens times fifteen) for $2,250!!  That was very exciting for us as we had never won much of anything on a megabucks machine before and even though $2,250 is far short of the big jackpot, it was a big win for us, 

Our big win.

A win this large is a hand pay so soon a couple of attendants showed up and took our information for tax purposes and then counted out $2,250 in cash.  After all of that we still had $46 of credit in the machine so we decided to just play that down and see what happens.  Well, a few spins of the reels later and we hit a $600 jackpot, another big shock.  We tried a few more spins and decided to cash out with another $600 to bring our total on the megabucks machine to $2,850, what a way to start the trip!!!

Hell's Kitchen

I am not going to go into much detail for the entire trip, just the highlights so now onto food.  We are big fans of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, so when we are in Las Vegas we usually go to Gordon Ramsay Steak at the Paris Hotel. We were shocked to see that a Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen Restaurant had just opened up at Harvey's Hotel in Lake Tahoe, just across the street from Harrah's and also part of Caesars Entertainment.  I believe this is only the third Hell's Kitchen Restaurant he has opened up, so it was a big surprise to find one at Lake Tahoe.  The other two are in Las Vegas and Dubai.

We decided we definitely wanted to eat there, but found it had only been open a week and they were booked for the next three months, but there were a few openings at odd times so we ended up getting a reservation for 3:45 on Tuesday, a little late for lunch and early dinner, but we planned accordingly and were good and hungry when our time arrived.  I read an article in a Reno newspaper that said when they started taking reservations they got 8,000 in the first 48 hours, no wonder we had a tough time getting our reservation.

As I said, it had only been open a week and service was still a little rough around the edges, but still very, very good as we have come to expect from Gordon Ramsay restaurants.  The food also met the high standards we expected and we had a great meal.  We started our meal with an appetizer of pan seared scallops which were excellent.  For our main course we both had a filet mignon with a side of roasted brussel sprouts.  The filet mignon was also excellent and we both thought the brussel sprouts were even better than the ones we were served at Gordon Ramsay Steak in Las Vegas.  For dessert we passed up the signature Sticky Toffee Pudding (which is very good) in favor of a Chocolate Moose Cake that didn't disappoint, a delicious end to a great dinner.

We had a great time and the quality of the food and service was excellent especially considering it had only been open for a week.  If you are ever in the South Lake Tahoe area, I would highly recommend Hell's Kitchen.  It is casual while still being elegant, and while somewhat expensive, it's very much worth the cost.

1917

A few blocks from the hotel is an area called Heavenly Village.  It is where skiers can catch the gondola to the top of the mountain during winter, or for sightseeing in the warmer months.  There are also shops and a movie theater so one afternoon we decided to walk over and take in a movie.  It was a cold walk as the wind was blowing and it was in the low thirties, but we had brought our winter coats so we were fine.  We decided to see the movie "1917" as it had been nominated for 10 Academy Awards including for best director and movie.  I am not a big fan of war movies, but "1917" certainly lived up to its billing, it was really good.


The Blizzard


Thursday was our last day before returning home Friday and snow was predicted.  Around noon it started to snow and continued to snow hard throughout the afternoon.  It was a real blizzard and you could barely see across the street.  For those of us who live in Southern California, that was something we rarely get to see and we were fascinated.  The snow kept falling into the night and we became a little concerned about our drive through the Sierras to get home, but they were predicting sunny skies in the morning so we hoped the weather forecast was correct.

Val's Last Hurrah and the Trip Home

We had $100 in "free play" given to us by the hotel to use before we left so we saved it for our last night.  Val chose a dollar machine in the high limit area so we sat down to try our luck.  At $5 a spin our money (or rather the hotel's money) would go fast, but amazingly we started to win right away.  I am a conservative gambler and when we got up to $400 I wanted to cash out, but Val, who is a true gambler wanted to keep going.  When we got down to $320 I said no more and we cashed out.  That was $160 a piece that I was very happy about, but while I was off cashing in the ticket, Val put another $40 in the machine and was winning more money.  She kept winning and her total went to almost $700.  She played it down to $600 and decided to call it quits and cashed out.  Since I had already cashed out, there was no splitting this win, it was all hers.  Oh well, being the conservative one, I'd probably do the same thing again.

After a $415 bonus win, Val had won over $600 while I sat and watched.

After Val's big win, we called it a night and went to our room to get ready to depart the next day.  When we got up the weather had cleared, but there was a lot of snow on the ground.

After the blizzard there was a lot more snow than the day we arrived.

We took our time leaving as we wanted to let the road clear, and were on the road around 10:00.  Our rooms were already comped so there was no cost there, but before checking out I talked to a host and asked him if our play warranted covering any of our food (we charge everything to our room) and surprisingly, all of our meals were comped including our meal at Hell's Kitchen.  Not only did we win quite a bit of money, our visit didn't cost us anything.  In truth though, this was unusual as we certainly have paid with our casino losses, and over the long haul, the casino never loses.

It was only 21 degrees F when we hit the road, and it was slow going through town as the roads were slippery and at one point traffic stopped while a tow truck removed a car that had spun out.  There was chain control going up into the Sierras, but since we had 4-wheel drive we were able to pass through without putting on chains.  It was a very slow drive all through the mountains (35 mph) until we got to the Placerville area, which is on the western side of the Sierras.  We didn't get home until 6:00 PM and we were tired, but happy as it had been a great trip.

What's Next

Our next trip will be my birthday trip to Las Vegas in February, but unless something unusual happens, there will be no blog post.  After that we have a trip to Michigan planned to see my relatives.  Then we have a long cruise planned for the fall where we will circumnavigate the continent of Africa.  That's all for now so we'll see you on down the road.