Tempting Temecula

In these times of pinching pennies, I took ten thousand of mine to Pechanga Resort at Temecula last weekend and put them into some penny and nickel slot machines. Amazingly, I came home with $1,000. At one point I was up over $2K, so I'm glad I stopped at $1K and put the money in the bank.

My friend, Karen, taught me the merits of playing penny and nickel slots instead of quarter and dollar slots. Every time she came back from the Palm Desert area casinos, she would tell me how she'd won anywhere from $500 to $5,000 and always on the "little" slots. I have absolutely NO idea what I did to win the money. The crazy machines would just start playing lots of music and the points would go up-up-up! Then I would cash out and walk over to the three-card poker table to show my big "ticket" to Gary. His response? "Bitch."

I'm singing the praises of Temecula to anyone in Southern California who wants a fun vacation close to home. It's the perfect antidote to our national consumer financial anxiety attack. We had a fabulous lunch at the South Coast Winery restaurant with our son and daughter-in-law, Cory and Emilie, and they took us wine-tasting afterwards at both South Coast and Robert Renzoni. Even Gary sipped wine with us and we bought a few bottles to take home. That night we enjoyed our 10th anniversary dinner at the Great Oaks Steak House at Pechanga with Cory, Emilie and my sister, Meg, and her husband, Ted, and daughter, Hannah. All of them (except Em) were in our wedding party 10 years ago. Then I went out to the casino and won $600 more on a nickel slot.

I love Temecula even when I don't win. The Spa at Pechanga was recently renovated and is serene and pleasant with excellent massage therapists and estheticians. Gary sent me for a massage/facial package - the perfect anniversary gift. I bought him some cigars. One has to know what's important to one's spouse!

On Saturday morning, we joined Meg, Ted and Hannah for breakfast at the Swing Inn Cafe in Old Town Temecula. It's a down-and-dirty joint with great food and lots of old-town atmosphere, set in the midst of scenic buildings and fun shops including my sister's favorite, Quilters Corner.

I didn't realize that just down the street from the Swing Inn is the Long Branch Bar where Horace Magee, a cowboy of Native American descent who worked on the Garner Ranch, shot and killed two men who had taunted him horribly during an evening of heavy drinking on Christmas Eve, 1907. The story is that Magee told one of the men he would buy him a drink if he would "Kiss my ass." The man agreed. When Magee lowered his trousers, instead of a kiss, he got a lit cigar in a place where the sun doesn't shine. Magee was so enraged that he left the bar and returned later with a gun. Magee was convicted and served a dozen years in San Quentin before my step-grandfather, Robert Garner, convinced a judge to parole Magee and let him return to spend the rest of his life at Garner Ranch. Our family knew Horace Magee as a wonderful man who even saved the life of my stepdad, Jack, when he was a boy. The tragedy was the result of a bad prank gone wrong. Magee died on the ranch in 1963while our ranch cook, Jozee Salinas, was cutting his hair. He was 85 years old.

Read more about this story here: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/12/24/news/californian/22_16_0112_23_07.prt

I hope you will visit Temecula and relish its wide variety of pleasures. Let me know about your experience, too.