Collecting states -- Tuesday: Connecticut

On our way to Newfoundland, we are "collecting states" that we have not yet been in together and with Gracie. On Tuesday, we drove through part of New York...

... including crossing the Hudson on the "new" Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (replaced the Tappan Zee Bridge in 2017).

We aren't "counting" New York as a "visited" state yet, because we didn't spend the night, though Carl's opinion is that paying $20.53 in tolls for the privilege of crossing the bridge should count, even though we didn't stop and spend any money otherwise!

We got into Connecticut soon after, and once we got past many miles of really horrendous road surfaces on I-95, we had smooth sailing to our stop at Mohegan Sun Casino for the night.

When I was doing the original trip planning, I had planned we would stop for the night at a boatyard in the Harvest Host program, but when I contacted them, they indicated that there were still too many boats in the yard for them to be able to accommodate us. I was glad that they made that determination rather than trying to get us squeezed in when it may not have been safe for us or the boats!

The casino had a parking lot for RVs, and we had printed out a permit application form from their website and had it completed before we got there. Security came by to exchange our permit application form for a permit to put into our window. I think they allow stays of up to one week (just a parking lot, no services), and you may be able to stay longer with another application. We only wanted an overnight stay.

We walked over to the casino buildings -- this was in the entrance hallway from the "Winter Garage" and on the way to the Expo and Conference Center.

We stopped to eat the most expensive Chick-Fil-A food we've ever encountered ($35 for two meals!).

After eating, we walked a little further into the casino -- it was the quietest (in terms of noise) of any casino I have ever been around.

Lots of bright lights, but usually the machines are ringing and making all sorts of noise to try to encourage people to come over and put money into them!

There were a good number of people there - a *lot* of Asian folks in a couple of areas (the informational signs around saying that no one under 18 could be on the casino floor appeared to be in English, Spanish, and Chinese). The areas where the Asian folks were playing seemed to be primarily tables with dealers but the games did not appear to be card games -- more like dominoes or dice. I looked up information on the website and found:

Asian Table Games at Sunrise Square

Located in the Autumn section of Casino of the Earth. Sunrise Square features an expanded bus lobby, table games such as Pai Gow, Mini Baccarat and Sic Bo, Southeast Asian dining options including numerous types of Congee and Soups, a variety of sushi roll selections and house-made Korean sandwiches and Bao Steamed Buns and don't forget your coffee and donut at Dunkin'.

We did not notice any smoking at all -- the information online indicates that there is a smoke-free area, but all the areas we walked around seemed to have no one smoking.

Neither of us are at all interested in gambling, so we just walked around and then headed back to Gracie for a quiet night's rest!