MWRT – 2025 – 2nd Day in Minneapolis

Started the day with a visit to Running Aces Harness Track and Casino, and then over to the Canterbury Park. Both are horse racing tracks combined with Casino Card Rooms (they don’t have slot machines).

These race track facilities and actual tracks were very beautiful. If I’d had time and another day, It would have been great to stay the evening and watch the races. I’ve loved horse racing ever since as a kid my folks would stop in Riodosa or Raton Pass on the way to Colorado to spend a night and attend the horse races.

One year on a family vacation we ate dinner at a quaint little Mexican Food local eatery and they had the most wonderful Sopapillas with honey. We were so impressed, the next time we were to go on vacation to Colorado and were passing through Raton Pass, we all were anxious to go back for some of that home style Mexican comfort food. My family still laughs when we recall my dad’s difficulty finding the restaurant. He remembered the name and about where it was to be found, but he had no address and of course, no Google Maps, much less a mobile phone.

The funniest moment came when dad saw a woman waiting at the curbside for a bus or something and he slowed, rolling down his window, ready to ask her if she knew the place and could provide directions. The woman was Hispanic and spoke broken english but was very happy to help because she to knew the restaurant to which we were all excited to find. She confidently pointed us forward, to continue along our way and told dad, “just go to the end and mill around, it’s right there”. Dad had a quizzical expression and was about to ask for clarification when the nice lady’s bus arrived and with a polite nod, she was off.

Dad turned to us all and slowly said while his eyes looked as though he were deep in thought, “mill around”? None of us thought that was going to be very fruitful for finding our favorite Mexican fool place in Raton. We drove on, soon coming to a traffic circle and as we passed through, glancing all around, we all at once noticed along the river, an old Mill powered by a water paddle. As soon as we had made it around the mill, boom, there was the restaurant. Our friend had give perfect instructions after all. “Mill Around” – “Around the Mill”!

I’ve been to the San Antonio Retama Park a few times, but these days they only run quarter horses and often cancel the events the last minute so it’s pretty uncertain going there.

After a couple of hours playing Blackjack at Running Aces, and being way down, then recovering and being up a little, I was tapped on the shoulder and told my game was unwanted at this casino. I asked the manager if I had done something wrong and all he would tell me was “we just don’t care for your style of play”. “You mean winning?”, I replied. He wasn’t in the mood for discussing the fine points and suggested I color up my chip stack and cash out while a security guard looked on. I turned to the table and pushed my chips to the dealer asking for color up and my playing comrades at the table were all a little stunned and asking why I couldn’t play anymore. One lady started saying that the casino didn’t want winners playing at the tables. Fortunately they decided this after I was up a bit. I went on to Canterbury and played a couple of hours there before hitting the road to Sioux Falls SD.

Interestingly, these two Card Rooms had a Limit of $300 top bet at the table and the highest chip denomination they had in the tray was a $300 chip, something I’d never seen before.

Moving on to Sioux Falls enjoying the green lush beauty of the farm lands along the way and hoping for a better day tomorrow.