Wednesday 4-24-24 Playing Pinball, Gambling & Having Fun

 

Having Fun

Today was a day of having fun.

We woke up to a brisk morning with the temperature in the 40's. The high was 68 degrees. 

I crawled out of bed at 7:00 and made mini waffles for breakfast. Then we got ready to leave. We weren't in any hurry because where we were going was 115 miles and it wasn't going to open until noon. We were on the road by 8:00.

We had a great two nights at Binder Campground Park. The drive was partly on the interstate but mainly on two lane highways in the direction of St. Louis. 

We spent the day playing pinball at two different places in suburbs of St. Louis. The first place was at a West County Lanes, it is a bowling alley and opens at noon. We got there around 10:30 so we had a couple of hours to kill. Larry found a Target a few miles down the road. We parked the Minnie in the Target parking lot and went inside. We looked at the barbecue grills. We're looking for a small grill to replace the grill we travel with in the Minnie. The last two times we replaced the grill we got them from Target. We didn't find the one we wanted so we went back to the Minnie and read. The bowling alley has a snack bar but we decided to have a sandwich in the Minnie instead.

After lunch it was time to go to West County Lanes to play pinball. It was a very nice place and well maintained. It had 15 games but one was out of order. It is quite normal to have machines out of order. These machines are very complex with lots of mechanical and electrical parts. There were also arcade games in the back. You had to use quarters to play. There was a coin machine to get change or you can put a dollar bill in the machine. All of the pinball machines cost a dollar to play. We played all the games and went through $17.00. They also have 24 lanes to bowl. Each lane was a different color. There was a bar and snack bar, they had a huge banquet room with tables and one pool table. The machines were very nice and played great. Some of the games we never played before such as Scooby- Doo and Fathom. We spent an hour and a half there and had a great time.

 

Bowling Pinball Bar welcome sign

 

Six of the pinball machines

Six more pinball machines

Bowling lanes

Thunderball

Game of Thrones

 

Scooby-Doo

 

Star Wars The Mandalorian

  

Playing pinball at the Bowling Pinball Bar

Larry playing pinball

Fathom

While walking out a gentleman, who was working there talked to us for a bit. His grandmother owned the place since 1984 and the previous owner had opened it in 1965. They started out with five machines and decided to add more because of the popularity of pinball. It is still family run.

Next stop was at The Lazarus St. Louis Pinball Museum. According to Google it opened at 3:00, we arrived about 2:00, we found a a Gyro restaurant nearby and decided to get something to eat. We parked the Minnie and walked about a block to the Gyro/Gyro restaurant. Larry and I shared a Gyro Chicken Bowl and Baklava. There were only two ladies working when we came in. As we were waiting for the food, it started to get busy so another lady joined the other two ladies to help. The bowl was in a big foil dish. We didn't eat all of it because it was too big. The bowl was delicious. When we were finished Larry went and told the waitress we were ready for the baklava. This was messy but very good. The workers were friendly, the service was fast and the food was hot and delicious.

 

Customers giving their order

 

Baklava

At 3:00 we tried to get in the museum but it was still closed. We went back to the Minnie and Larry found on their website the opening time was 4:00 not 3:00. So we went back to the Minnie and read.

The Lazarus St. Louis Pinball Museum has 40 pinball machines. The cost is $12.00 for 90 minutes, $16.00 for 3 hours and $20.00 all day. If you use a credit card it cost more. We paid for 90 minutes a piece, which was plenty of time. I lost track of how many games we played. Every games was free play. A lot of the games were old games. We played games we hadn't played in other places (Iron Maiden, Avatar, Austin Powers, Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie's Spook Show Internal). The machines were in great shape and played excellent. The place was very clean and well taken care of. I prefer to play the newer games because you have more action and things to do while playing. The owner was very friendly and helpful. We had a super time playing pinball at The Lazarus. 

 

The Lazarus St. Louis Pinball Museum

Some of the pinball machines

 

More pinball machines

Avatar

 

Iron Maiden

 

Austin Powers

 

Alice Cooper

 

Rob Zombie's

 

Independence Day

Godzilla

 

Larry playing Hurricane (Killer Klowns came from)

By the time we finished playing pinball it was 5:30. Our final destination for the day was River City Casino, which was 14 miles away. We were surprised how easy it was to drive through St. Louis with no delays and at rush hour.

When we got to River City Casino we drove around to find the parking lot designated for truck parking. It took a bit but we found it. Once the Minnie was parked for the night I went over to give the casino some money. I was there for almost two hours and gave them $20.00. The casino was great. I think half of the casino was non-smoking. There was plenty of machines to play on and self-service soda stations throughout the casino. I had a super time. 

 

River City Casino

While I gambled Larry read. When I got back we had a chocolate cupcake for dessert. I didn't play any of my games because I wanted to conserve power. I ended up only doing 4,347 steps, which put me in 8th place in my group