Trip Report: Rhythm City Iowa. Casino in a Cornfield

Over 40 years on this earth, and I have never been to Iowa. So, why Iowa? And why now? I recently made friends with a guy in Le Claire, which is immediately over the Illinois border. We had worked out a trade for some sports memorabilia, and decided it would just be easier to do the deal in person.

All this time, and I didn't realize Iowa was only about 2 hours west of me. Not that I had a reason to go before now. After all, Iowa... But as it turns out, there is quite a bit to do in the Quad Cities, which apparently includes a plethora of casinos. Again, who knew?

You have Bally's Casino in Rock Island Illinois. Which is the fictitious home town of the Blues Brothers by the way.

Isle Casino in Bettendorf Iowa, which is a Caesars owned property I just found out.

And the closest casino to my buddy in Le Claire, Rhythm City Casino, which is about 10 minutes west of where we will be.

Not willing to drive the nearly 5 hour round trip, just to swap stuff with my boyfriend. We decided to make a weekend of things, and see how the other half lives in Iowa.

I only had a very slightly discounted room at the Caesars owned joint. I passed on that. I emailed a random host at Bally's with my play, and the fact that I am rated at their property in Atlantic City. But that dick bag never replied to me. And I also sent the same email to a host at Rhythm City, and cut a deal for a free room, as long as I ran at least $5K through the slots. Its a fair deal, and I hate gambling for free. So it worked for us.

We took this adventure with my Brother and his girlfriend. Not that that is important, but in case I use any pictures of one of them with my kids, I don't want any of you to think some strangers were getting overly friendly with my offspring.

Le Claire Iowa is not only the hometown of Buffalo Bill Cody, but it is also where the hayseeds from the show American Pickers are located. If anyone has seen their show on the History channel, the below would be pretty familiar to you.

Their shop became our first stop in town. I love the show, maybe even more so now that Frank is no longer on it. While Mike Wolfe seems like a very honest dude, Frank always came off as a bit of a shyster.

The show has been around for over a decade, and has logged 22 seasons and counting. Much like Pawn Stars in Vegas, very little of what you see on TV, is actually for sale or in the shop. A handful of NFS (Not For Sale) signs on anything you actually saw picked during the show. In other words, if you recognized it, or it was actually something interesting you wanted to buy, you couldn't get it.

Even though they have 2 building up, outside of stuff made for sales, like American Pickers stickers, hats, shirts, coloring books ETC. Not a whole lot of actual antiques at Antique Archeology are for sale. Which is a major bummer. They had some worthless smalls out, like cuts from an old scrap book and what not. But nothing we (or most people I'd assume) could actually use for anything.

Danny D, who runs the shop on the show, actually has her own store in Chicago. We didn't expect to see anyone famous, knowing she is hardly there outside of filming. And the boys are typically on the road. But I certainly thought we would see more than what they put out!

Thank Gawd we didn't drive all the way out here just for AA. I mean, I am glad we saw it, but really no reason to go back. That is with all due respect to them, as we will certainly keep watching their show.

But it makes me wonder, where all that shit they pick actually goes? To their bigger place in Nashville? Immediately sold to other dealers? Who knows. All I know is, it sure as shit doesn't end up here!

I am going to keep typing Le Claire in the same manner. Even though it appears as 2 words on most signs, while others show it as LeClaire, as can be seen below. No clue which is right.

Downtown Le Claire, which is just steps away from Antiques Archeology, has a nice small town charm to it. Not a ton to see, but an easy couple of hours could be burned here walking through their Ma & Pop shops, and paying a visit to the museum.

This is not on the town, but we did show up in the middle of February. Not everything was open, and it looks like they have a pretty cool steamboat that will take you up and down the Mighty Mississippi River. Which could be fun.

We did end up at the Buffalo Bill Museum, which is small, but certainly worth a look if you are in town. I think it costs like 5 bucks to get in, but it just so happened we were there on Old Bills Birthday, which made it free. I did drop $5 in the donation box, after all the world needs more roadside attractions like these around.

They had a free scavenger hunt for kids, where they had to find things scattered throughout the museum. A newer wing, with an actual old timey paddle-wheel boat in it. You could climb around on the thing if you wanted to. It was sketchy for sure, but my big ass didn't fall through it. So I assume you should be OK.

They had an old school room set up, and as seen on American Pickers, Iron Eyes Cody's teepee. What they didn't really have, is Buffalo Bill shit in the Buffalo Bill museum. I mean, they had some information on him, some old books about him on display. But outside of some pictures they just printed off the web, no actual Buffalo Bill artifacts and such directly related to him. If his name wasn't all over the building, and the museum itself didn't sit just off Cody street (named after him) you would just think this was a normal old small town museum.

The kids liked it, and they got to pick from a treasure box for their scavenger hunt prizes, and actually scored a fun slap bracelet.

Obviously I wouldn't post a Grid Family Day Trip, without a casino visit. And without further ado, I present to you the Rhythm City Casino!

Certainly not a Las Vegas resort experience. But also much better than your typical regional casinos. Unlike the old Riverboats, which had to be on water. RCC is actually land based, and makes good use out of their space.

It is only about 5 years old, and very modern looking. Roughly 1,000 slots, a spa, an indoor pool, 100 hotel rooms and just a handful of dining options.

In the above, what looks like a random bazaar, A La Fremont Street, is actually their casino store/sundries shop/ quick service food counter/ anything else they forgot they needed in a casino resort. Looks like it started its life as a deli, and then turned into something much more encompassing.

The modern blue decor was very nice, and the hotel check-in staff was really friendly. At 4PM on a Saturday the casino was fairly empty, but that would all change shortly as I would soon find out.

While a bit small, the hotel room was fine. You couldn't control the actual temperature in your room, which is odd. They have a pool, but you need to bring the towels from your room if you want to dry off, which is both a pain in the asshole and not very practical if you planned on showering as well. As you just burned all your dry towels on the pool.

The TV was small, and there was no way to lock the shitter. Not that I care, as I normally take a dump with the bathroom door open to help vent the space. Which this space needed, as they didn't have an exhaust fan in there.

Still, I highly doubt they were thinking about comfort when they built these rooms. As with most casinos like this, its just a bed for the night so you can drink and gamble all you want. And for that, this would certainly do the trick.

Is it worth $200 a night, if you actually had to pay to stay here? Maybe. It looked like rooms at the garbage Motel 6 in town were about a hundred bucks a night. And this should be at least twice as good as that.

They all hit the pool, and I hit the casino. I asked the club critter when I got my card, how much was a dollar to point. And she said roughly even, IE $1.00 of coin-in equals 1 point on the slots.

I don't like rough answers, but I guess she wasn't wrong. Some slot machines I would bet $2.50, and I would get 3 points each spin, instead of 5 points every $5.00 through. Other slots, like Kenny Rodgers below, I was betting $15 per spin, but only getting 10 points. Which is a ripoff, as I am not earning a third of the points I should have.

Still, I did OK! I was $200 into Cash Cave below, and cashed out up $50. I managed a $187.50 win on Black Diamond, betting $6.75 a spin. Blue Ribbon was a $9.00 bet, but I ended up with a $210 win.

The ebbs and flows were typical, and the casino itself has a published slot return of about 90%. Typical, as I was losing about 10% of my coin through on the slots which each swing I'd take. With variance, that actually isn't that bad. But it sure looks like I will be paying $500 in gambling losses, for my $200 room. But as a true gambler, I am OK with that. Like Mr Chow said in Hangover 3, all I want is a chance!

While not doing all that bad, I took a big swing on Kenny Rodgers at $15 per push. I had one small win for $100, and I honestly would have hedged my bets and played on, as I was only down a couple hundred bucks by then. But as I mentioned earlier, it wasn't getting full points and I need to make that 5,000. I like having goals!

I picked like a Boss on this Texas Tea for a $160 bonus, before heading back up to the room to figure out dinner.

Dining options are limited. But I guess that is par for the course considering the location, and the fact most locals would just eat and then head-over I guess. Still, rational or not, it didn't do us much good.

I assume they comp the buffet, as the line for that was out the door. It is $29.99 for adults, and $14.99 for kids 6-12. Not that I would have paid $100 for us 4 to eat there. They have a steakhouse, which wasn't in consideration for us. The clothing shop in my above picture, also sold donuts and sandwiches. Pass on that. Leaving the Sports book, which had typical pub food there.

Chicken Tenders, some nachos and fries were consumed, and it was actually pretty tasty. Not cheap, but not terrible for casino pricing.

I leave the girls in the room, and head back down to narrow out my points.

Gambling Round 1 earlier, I ended up losing about $300, but I earned 3,500 points. I am almost home, and that 10% hold is staying close to average.

The casino is a LOT more packed than it was earlier. I guess they are doing some kind of raffle, and they have a country band playing live music. Looks like this is the place to be in eastern Iowa on a Sunday night!

I lost a hundred bucks fucking around on this nickle game below. But made $111.75 in a bonus to bring me back up to good.

I really racked up some points on this $1 denom 7's game below. The highest payout would have been only $1,000 for all 3 matching blazing 7's. That means, without having to store as much returns for a major jackpot, that this game is the perfect grinder I needed to hit my points. Slow and steady! You wont get rich, but you shouldn't lose your ass either!

I hit for $50 4 or 5 times, and all these Red 7's for $100 a pop a few times as well. I was able to grind well over $1,000 of coin in, and I actually made a profit of like $50 after a good 20 minutes of donking it.

With only like 300 points to go, and plenty of money left, I sit on Monopoly here at $5.00 a spin. It was the right call! I spun the wheel, and landed on the mystery wedge.

That got me a money bag spin, and I landed 7 of those Beautiful Fuckers for $538.37 on the progressive. Had I gotten 8 bags, it would have been $1,009.37. And 9 bags would have been a whopping $7,666.25!

Still, I am not complaining. As this hit won me back all the money I lost up to this point, and I am actually now up a hair.

Looking to grind out the last of my points on an Ainsworth slot, I was pretty shocked to hit the Minor when it was just $27 over the reset. And with that $377 win, I am up for the trip AND I hit my 5,000 points to score the room for free!

I double check my points on the next game, take a picture and send it to my host. He confirms I am golden, and the room will be credited back.

Now, I can either go back up to the room with my smelly kids, the same ones I just spent a few hours in the car with all day. OR, I can take the $400 I am up, and see what more damage I can do is this now tightly packed casino...

The answer is... I should have gone up to the room. I just went off the rails being up in a new casino. To be fair to myself, a lot of the games I wanted to play were booked. So I ended up playing games I have never played before, and it didn't go as well.

Still, I set my loss limits, and I did end up OK at the end. Just not the full +$400 OK. But certainly not bad. Iowa gaming is a lot like Illinois gaming. Scratches the itch, but really nothing I would go out of my way for. I am glad I did this trip, as we saw some new places, witnessed some experiences and had fun. And without any gambling losses to bitch about, a successful trip for sure!