Luckily, my mobile phone had Google Maps (technology again, I know, but this app has a proven record of coming in handy) Two hours and one broken Magellan GPS later, we realize that we’re headed deeper and deeper into New Jersey and our GPS has no intention on turning us around. The thing about technology reliance these days is that 1) when you’ve got a GPS, you don’t think to take a map with you as a backup and 2) you get to trusting your GPS technology even when all logic and instinct tells you its been giving you bum directions. All was going smoothly until our Magellan GPS re-routed us to New Jersey before reaching the Connecticut turnoff. We left around noon in our Thrifty car rental for what we estimated to be a 3 hour drive. Surviving wonky GPS driving directions from New York City to the Connecticut With my sister and her Hawaii teammates in town for a canoe regatta, the “islander gambling bugs” had their curiosities peaked on Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods. tournaments.- appreciates this…).īut ask me about casinos on the east coast, aside from the ashtray of Atlantic City? Never knew they existed. What keeps me from my casino yawn are the neon lights, big screen displays of show previews and nightclub splash, celebrity impersonators, Cirque du Soleil and the fact that every hotel casino I enter invites me into a Universal Studios’ version of simulated life (the ex-art director in me who used to design for thematic parties- and some slot L.V.

Just another casino?…įor me, Las Vegas stands for that half-way mark where I can spend time with my visiting “gambler” family without having to cross the Pacific Ocean.

Nevertheless, Hawaii people have a strange addiction to Las Vegas and my family is no exception to the lures of Sin City. But visiting casinos without the fun parks, roller coaster rides or headlining entertainment acts? Uh, you just have to really enjoy gambling for the sake of gambling, which I do not.

When you’ve been to Las Vegas oh, “umpteenth times” like I have, you don’t really think of slot machines and black jack tables existing beyond the western border. Click on image above to activate slide show

Foxwoods and mohegan sun casinos