Once more, this time with my visiting aunts in tow, we visited yet another Indian casino called Cache Creek — one of the several that had mushroomed (and continues to) around California. The drive was a leisurely one since we embarked immediately after the rush hour traffic on a Thursday morning.
In about two hours, we had already parked our car in one of the wider, blue-colored slots with the distinctive disabled logo.
It had been several years back when we first went to this relatively unknown place just about 30 miles west (if coming from the Bay Area) off Highway 80 in Vacaville. It’s in a place called Brooks and the casino itself got its gaming license by being situated in the Indian reservation long inhabited by the Rumsey Band of Wintuns or the ‘Patwins.’
I was surprised how huge the place had now gotten to be. Gone was the sleazy feeling one gets when entering the casino. It had become now a ritzy and glitzy place that will give any medium-sized upscale casino in Las Vegas a run for its money.
 
  
If you enter the place from the south side, there will be airy restaurants that will immediately entice you with the variety of food that they offer. It used to be the area where, before, a small and cramped fast food was tucked beside a circular room where the nickel machines were located. Now, there’s an oyster bar, a deli, a fast food booth, an Asian resto, a huge taqueria, a seafood/steak house plus two huge restaurants that both offered modest buffets. How money can change the world, huh?
But the games remained the same except for the notable addition of two craps table. The tables may look the same as regular craps but look closely. In the center of the table was a port where cards were shuffled. Cards in a craps game? Yes, Indian casinos use cards to comply with the regulation that all table games must all be done using game cards. This is probably one of the deals, Las Vegas biggies had struck with Indian-gaming lobbyists, so as not to take too much of their very lucrative businesses or ‘level the playing field’, so to speak. And check out the dice, too! Those are not your standard pair of craps dice but specially made ones.
As usual, we meandered all throughout the place, hunting for any of our favorite penny slot machines. But we found no penny machines whatsoever. Do Indian casinos forego penny machines to make sure that they ‘rake it in’ quicker?
We found solace in a 10/25 cent variety that offered a modest payout even if you play only 1 or 2 coins (yes, we opted for the 10 cent game). Then, having sated our appetite for these games, we hied off to the nearby taqueria and had their luscious ‘beef taquitos‘ with ‘pico de gallo‘ as our chosen dipping. My aunts washed these down with iced-tea while I went for my usual coffee.
We went home at the break of dusk and wondered where’s the creek in the place that gave the casino its name or so it seemed. The Indians had, indeed, found a cache in the place. But it was not gold this time and the actual creek, for that matter, was not nearby the casino itself.
It was cold, hard cash being emptied out of the pockets of visitors, day-in and day-out. No wonder they had grown so big in so little time. For Cache Creek (the casino), it’s ‘ka-ching’, ‘ka-ching’, indeed!