I had seen the casinos numerous times, rising into Sunday-morning skies, but I had never seen their neon against the dark hillsides on a Saturday night, never mind from a seat at one of their tables.

Sure, I blew a couple of dollars on slot machines in Atlantic City when I went to support a friend's sister in the 2001 Miss America Pageant.

And I got in a couple of hands of blackjack and a few rounds on the penny slots when I met up with some college friends in Las Vegas two years ago. I ended that weekend up $3.50.

But I've lived in Escondido for three years without gambling at any of the tribal casinos that dot the byways of North County's backcountry.

I've even written articles about the gaming industry, a growing part of Southern California's tourism sector, without ever having my chips on the table.

My new editor seemed a little surprised when I told him that. So when he suggested that I spend the better part of a Saturday in the six casinos owned by local tribes -- the Palas, the Paumas, the Rincons, the San Pasquals, the Santa Ysabels and the Pechangas, it seemed like a good idea.

I'd get paid just like any other day and log the mileage, just as I would for any other reporting. My only question was how big of a gambling loss I could sneak onto my monthly expense sheet.

(Editor's note: He didn't sneak in any.)

It never occurred to me that I might end up ahead $50. My parents grew up in Southern Baptist churches, and they raised me to work hard and save my money. Gambling? My goodness. If the subject ever came up, it was an awkward mention as a cause of someone's divorce.

My father even ran for the North Carolina Senate after learning that the incumbent had voted to approve a state lottery to benefit public schools.

Stepping into a casino, with the lights and the electronic "bing-bings" and the smoke -- not to mention the thought of some people losing a lot of money -- had always put a knot in my stomach.

Santa Ysabel Casino, 4:25 p.m., mile 39

So Santa Ysabel was a good place to start. It's the smallest tribal casino in North County and the only one where I saw a $2 blackjack table.

It's also the farthest away, 39 miles east of -- and a half-mile higher than -- Escondido. So including it in my day with North County's other four tribal casinos meant striking Pechanga's casino on the grounds that it's not actually in North County and because I had visited it twice, for a concert and for dinner.

It's a shame I didn't have time last weekend, because the casino is bigger than any in San Diego County, and it has been arguably more successful.

But the drive out to Santa Ysabel is breathtaking, especially if you enjoy farm smells. And the casino's hilltop parking lot has magnificent views of several valleys.

At 4:20 p.m., about 200 cars were there.

The crowd inside was a bit older and seemed to include more local residents, than what I saw later in the evening. I sat down at a blackjack table next to a man my father's age.

The dealer wished everyone good luck at the beginning of each hand, and answered my questions, so after a few minutes I put down $10 and got five chips.

Blackjack's nice for a rookie because dealers play by a formula, drawing another card if their total showing is 16 or less, and usually holding if it's 17 or more. Tips are an important part of their income, and at most of the casinos last weekend, they really seemed to want me to win.

Phil, a flamboyant dealer at a $50 blackjack table at Harrah's Rincon Casino, did celebratory gyrations several times after losing big hands.

At Santa Ysabel, a dealer let me in on a basic rule: Split a pair of eights into two hands. I ended up with several hands of 18 and 19 in the course of the evening, and ended up $15 or $20 ahead because of it.

I left Santa Ysabel a little after 5 with an extra $5 in my pocket. As I passed Lake Henshaw on Highway 76, I realized I was looking forward to playing with higher limits.

The road is one of my favorites. It rises and falls alongside the upper San Luis Rey River, and on a clear day you can see the upper reaches of Palomar Mountain.

The terrain was what first drew me there last fall, and while it has been manageable for Sunday morning bicycle rides, it can be nerve-racking late on a Saturday afternoon with the sun straight ahead and squads of motorcycles zooming by.

And it's tough to keep your eyes on the road and off the scenery. When an ambulance screamed by me last weekend, I wondered whether it was carrying a rubbernecker or a daredevil motorcyclist who crashed coming down the mountain or maybe a drunken driver who lost control after leaving a casino. It wasn't the only ambulance that passed me that day.

Harrah's, 5:55 p.m., mile 63

To me, it seemed like Harrah's, on Valley Center Road just south of Highway 76, had more neon and glitz than any of the other four I visited. It also had the highest limits -- I couldn't find any table games with minimum bets of less than $10.

I put a dollar into a penny slot just to try it out. It had the standard three dials, each with the same mix of words, sevens and graphics.

With each spin, you can play one line and hope, for example, that three sevens line up straight across, or you can also bet that they'll line up in certain zigzag patterns.

Harrah's had hundreds of machines in variations of the same basic theme, and hundreds of people were sitting at them, all staring straight ahead, all pushing buttons, as the "bings" and the "bongs" rang out from every corner of the gambling floor.

I lost 28 cents, got bored, and moved on to video poker. I lost another 50 cents in short order, and moved on to a blackjack table, where Phil, with his spikey flat-top haircut and orange-ochre uniform shirt, was sweeping away a stack of $25 chips, 10 or 12 of them, from a middle-age woman named Lydia. A few minutes later, Lydia and a couple of other players won several hundred dollars each.

"You win! I pay you big money!" Phil exclaimed in self-parody, swinging his hips around.

A woman next to Lydia, perhaps in her early 40s, lost several $50 hands in a row, without seeming to give much thought to it. She hung her head and moaned and laughed at herself after each.

San Pasqual Indian Reservation, 7 p.m., mile 68

From Harrah's, Valley View Casino was a short drive up Valley Center Road. As soon as got inside, I went on a search for a $5 blackjack table. I found two in a far corner of Valley View's "nonsmoking casino," which itself was in a far corner of the main casino.

It was a nice relief, because the smoke at Santa Ysabel and Harrah's earlier had made me a little dizzy. The dealer, Eric, told me the $5 tables had been set up specifically to draw people into the smoke-free area, which was new. They'd be cut, he said, once the smoke-free area builds up a regular clientele.

I was the only one at Eric's table, so I didn't feel too bad about hitting him up for blackjack advice. He gave me some tips on strategy, but most of it consisted of verbal slaps on the wrist: Don't touch chips that are in play, he chided flatly. Don't change seats midhand to make room for people sitting down.

It's OK to say "hit me" or "hold," but you absolutely have to tap the table to get a card, and you have to hold up your hand or make a cutting motion to hold because the overhead camera is the final authority in a dispute.

It was all by the book, which was probably a good thing. Driving alongside the meadows and canyons that afternoon, I'd been listening to Bob Dylan's soundtrack to a Western: "There's always one more notch and four more aces, Billy, and you're playing all alone." I guess gambling has come a long way from the days of saloons and unshaven, shifty-eyed ramblers who marked cards and kept a six-shooter on one hip.

In any case, I did all right by Eric. I started with four $5 chips, and stayed ahead for several hands. I fell behind pretty quickly, though, and when I got down to my last chip I resolved to put in another $20 if I lost it. I had a streak of luck coming -- I just knew it.

And, presto, I was back up to four chips, then six. Eric clapped his hands and turned them over to show they were empty, and he was replaced with by young woman named Rong.

In the meantime, two twentysomethings -- second-generation Indian-Americans, I gathered from their looks and their language -- had sat down on my right.

At the other end of the table were two women speaking what sounded like Chinese. A white man with a pocked face stumbled into the seat on my left, lost a couple of hands, and then stumbled away.

A large woman with a pink cotton shirt squeezed in to replace him. When she noticed me pausing for thought, she unleashed a flood of advice: Split a pair of aces into two hands. If you have 10 showing, double your bet and take exactly one more card in a "double down." Hit on 12 and maybe even 13 if the dealer has a face card showing.

It was past eight o'clock. I had two more casinos on my list, and I hadn't even eaten dinner. But I was up $30 or $40 and having a pretty good time, to boot.

Rong left and a dealer named Blu came on. I told myself I'd play a couple of hands with him and then leave.

Like most others, Blu had a unique dealing style: Stand each card up nearly straight so it falls over toward the player. I won $5, then $10. I wanted more, but I had to go. It was 8:30.

I took my chips to the cashiers' window and walked off with $70, a $50 gain. I called my younger sister in Atlanta to tell her. The idea of my playing blackjack for money really cracked her up. She said my call reminded her of the way my niece, who is potty training, proudly announces that she has just made a poo-poo.

No matter. I was wending my way back down Valley Center Road in the darkness. I had money in my pocket and I felt pretty good. My growling stomach and the stream of headlights coming up and around the curves kept me focused on the road ahead.

Pauma Casino, mile 79, about 9 p.m.

I knew I'd have time only to eat at Pauma. My heart sank when I got inside: It lacked the smorgasbord of restaurants that you can find at Rincon, Pala and Pechanga casinos.

The roof overhead looked a bit like the inside of a circus tent. This was a temporary casino, and I remembered that the Paumas had been negotiating with the county government and some nearby residents who opposed the tribe's plans for a larger permanent facility that would have four or five restaurants.

But the Thai chicken pizza from the snack bar was scrumptious, nearly filling, and cost only $6.50, including the $1 I lost on video poker while waiting for it. The Asian-style chicken salad from the cafe was pleasant, too.

I walked out to my car and looked back at the casino lights, glowing brightly to my left, and then at the dark outline of Cole Grade across the valley to my right.

Pala Casino Spa and Resort, mile 87, 10:42 p.m.

I pulled into Pala's parking lot, past one tour bus with Korean lettering and another with Chinese. Even at this hour, and even on the fourth level of the parking deck, I had to search carefully for a space. I took the elevator down with two other men in their 30s.

I had resolved to quit gambling while I was ahead, even though the $10 and $15 table games -- including a couple in the nonsmoking area -- were now within my reach. I stopped at a $10 three-card poker table where a stout gray-haired man had accumulated a stack of $5 chips. He told me he was $100 ahead after an hour of playing.

I had never seen three-card poker, so I watched for a few minutes and began peppering him with questions. He explained the game clearly and calmly. It didn't seem any more complicated or difficult than blackjack, except that a player can make up to three bets, on three types of outcomes, in each hand.

"Don't let me distract you," I said after seeing him lose a couple of hands.

"It's not distracting." The game, he said, is "a no-brainer."

I walked out of the nonsmoking area to go see how the high-rollers rolled.

Even with eight players, the $100 baccarat table was quiet. I wondered whether I would be able to make sense of the game before a pit boss identifies me as riffraff and asks me to leave. Instead, I ran out of patience first.

The $200 blackjack table was easier to understand, even if the sums of money made my head spin. I watched as three middle-age Asian men lost $300, won $500, lost $200. It went pretty fast. I'd have $2,000 in my pocket now if I had been playing with $100 chips at Valley View, I thought to myself.

The dealer, a young blonde woman whose badge identified her as being from Riverside, held the deck just below her chin and spun the cards down to land directly in front of each player -- one, two, three; one, two, three.

The balding man at the right of the table won $300, and then another $300. He stacked up half of his black $100 chips, about fist-high. He busted with 23, losing about $1,200 in the span of a minute. He lost another $1,200 on the next hand, downed the rest of his drink, gathered up his cigarettes, and shuffled off.

It was about time for me to go, too. The smoke was getting to me again, and I was planning to meet some friends at 7:30 the next morning for cycling. But the full moon shimmered above as I drove the curves of Highway 76 toward Interstate 15, and I had a wad of 20s in my pocket -- OK, three of them. And a ten. And maybe a few ones. It was a good evening.

Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (760) 740-5444 or cbagley@nctimes.com. Bagley blogs about local economic trends at www.nctimes.com/blogs/minding_your_business.

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