Redwoods and Indian Casinos

Today we woke up and drove through the Redwood National Forest. The first stop was at a beach just inside the park where we walked around for a bit, and I played with some seagulls (mostly just trying to see how close I could get to them). The second stop was at the top of a mountain for a hike on a trail that went to The Grove of Giants. We hiked for an hour and a half through fields and trees looking at the beautiful scenery. There were a lot of giant trees, ferns, bright yellow slugs, snails, elk, and no bears. Unfortunately we had to turn around before we made it to the Grove of Giants because it was getting late and we didn't want to be stuck in a field in the dark with the bears. The hike was fun and relaxing except the entire way back was uphill. We left the park after our hike and started heading north toward Portland again. After a couple hours of driving, both of us were getting tired so we decided it was a good time to finally stop at a casino! It was an Indian reservation casino call the Seven Feathers. We seriously rolled into this casino at eleven o clock and spent a couple hours there. Our limit was ten dollars each, we got our club cards, and we were off to the penny slots! Turns out the slot machines are a little confusing with all those pictures and different ways to bet in every diagonally way possible. I settled on the Slingo machine (penny) after trying a few that weren't very fun because they were too difficult to understand. I decided what the hell and pressed the max bet button, which was two dollars. Go big or go home was my temporary motto. All of a sudden lights were lighting up and there was clinking. I won twenty dollars! I should have stopped there, but as a slot machine newb I continued to bet and lost most of what I had won. I took it pretty well since I had planned on spending ten dollars anyway, and it was late. We decided to get some food and then continued to gamble. David wasn't having much luck and had to turn to scouting the casino for abandoned tickets worth only a few pennies so he could keep playing. This however led to the security guards watching us more closely. We were the youngest people in there flitting about sporadically to different machines, and everyone else was planted at their favorite game. When both of us finally lost our ten dollars a security guard approached us and asked for our IDs. David being who he is asked if "this was a routine check". The security guard ignored his question and wished us luck. Obviously he just wanted us to know they were watching us. We left because we were out of money but perhaps too early making us look guilty. We went across the street to the gas station that was also owned by the casino. A security truck pulled up in the space next to us and the man got out and went into the store. I didn't think he was following us but David did. Anyway nothing else happened and we went to sleep in the parking lot.