It Seems Like Old Times

For Our Girls Trio in Tunica

by Pat Lindsey

When my friends, Linda and Carol, and I decided to go on a “girls getaway” at the end of summer, we chose a destination within hours of home that would be a fun three days, but not too exhausting. That’s because this was the first trip for this travel trio in more than two years since Linda was diagnosed with cancer. After two major surgeries and rounds of chemo and radiation, she still has some bad days, so we wanted to make sure that if an emergency arose we would be near a good hospital or be able to get back home in a matter of hours.

Tunica seemed the perfect place for three women who enjoy playing slot machines and Gold Strike Resort and Casino was the unanimous choice for our two-night stay.

It could be a one-stop shop, if necessary, but if we wantedto venture out of town, Memphis was only 42 minutes.

The drive from St. Louis to Tunica is a straight shot down I-55 before changing to U.S. Hwy 61 near Memphis, but it’s fairly uneventful–just a lot of farmland and divided highway. It’s about a five-hour drive, unless you veer off the highway for a stop in Cape Girardeau, Sikeston, or other small towns along the route. We stopped for lunch in Cape Girardeau and contemplated going downtown to see where “Gone Girl” was filmed, but Tunica was calling us and we decided to get back on the road and get to Gold Strike by the 4 p.m. check-in time.

Gold Strike is the tallest hotel in Tunica (easy to spot) and our adjoining rooms were on the 28th floor overlooking the three casinos that share one immense parking lot: Horseshoe, Roadhouse, and Goldstrike. Our rooms were clean and spacious with two double beds and everything we needed for playing cards and board games in the room after we had lost our limit at the slot machines. Since we were there in the middle of the week, we weren’t able to see any of the fabulous shows that play there on the weekends, and we will definitely keep that in mind when we plan our next trip. Coming soon will be Vince Gill (9/24/16), Martina McBride (10/21/16), and Carrot Top (11/19/16).

Deciding where to eat in Tunica is easy, because every casino has a buffet and usually two or three additional restaurants. On our first night at Gold Strike, we had the all-you-can-eat Buffet Americana dinner and it was delicious. We must have eaten our fill, because we didn’t need to eat much the next day until mid-afternon

            Memphis Short Drive Way

Linda was still feeling well on Day 2 of our trip, so we got in the car again and drove to Memphis for a late lunch and some sight-seeing. You can’t go wrong with barbecue on Beale Street, so we chose one with a familiar name–B.B. King’s. At 3 p.m., the place was fairly empty, but we were told that free live music would be starting at 5 p.m. We knew we couldn’t stay that long, but made another mental note of that for a future visit. The infamous ducks at the Peabody Hotel make their ascent to their penthouse roost at 4 p.m. and we wanted to see that.

Directly across the street from the Peabody is AutoZone Ballpark, the home of the Memphis Redbirds. Being Cardinals fans, we couldn’t miss an opportunity to take a peek at their rising stars for a few innings in a beautiful ballpark smack dab in the middle of downtown Memphis. The Redbirds lost to Nashville 0-3 that night, but we left before the end of the game so that we could take a quick tour of Mud Island, a fascinating real estate success story on the Mississippi, and get back to Tunica in time to do a little more slots and then head up to the room to play a game of Wizard. Ordinarily, we don’t order room service, but a pizza sounded really good that night and we weren’t at all disappointed after it arrived and we dove into its cheesy goodness.

Day 3 arrived much too soon. It was time to check out of the beautiful Gold Strike Hotel, but we weren’t ready to end our quest to see who would be the biggest loser. Two years ago, I was a winner.There was still a little time left to explore one more casino and have another buffet. Carol had accumulated points on her Hollywood player’s card and suggested that we go there for lunch, her treat. The buffet at Hollywood wasn’t quite as good as Gold Strike’s, but the lunchtime entertainment was better. Our server was a wannabe stand-up comedienne who stopped by our table every few minutes with another joke. She cheered us up as we cried in our soup. Not one of us was going home a winner this time

The money we lost was chalked up to entertainment and we rationalized that if we had bought concert tickets, we would have spent much more. But this trip wasn’t about money, anyway. It was about good times with good friends and picking up where we left off more than two years ago. This was a milestone for Linda. Now that she knows she can travel again, we can start planning our next trip,

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