A resort with “gaming” is like a restaurant with a liquor license: some patrons insist upon it; some use it if it’s there and some are attracted by other amenities and couldn’t care less. As one who would rather play Pac Man than Blackjack you can guess which group I belong to. And what era. But if a place draws 250,000 visitors a month it’s safe to say all tastes are met.

Such a spot is the Sandia Resort & Casino maybe a quarter hour drive on Interstate 25 from the Sunport, which is what they call the airport in Albuquerque.

Decades ago any Americans who wanted to add gambling to their holiday went abroad, or to Nevada and later to Atlantic City. Now Casinos have popped up on many waterways and on every plot of land that Indians managed to retain as there own post 1492. Choosing a Casino at which to spend your time and money can be a gamble in itself.

This Sandia place is a good bet. And an interesting change from the usual gambling meccas.

Sandia Pueblo is as small in area as pueblos go  –  just 22,877 acres – but those acres are placed just north of Albuquerque, the densest amassment of population in the state. The pueblo lands extend north to the town of Bernalillo with the Rio Grande on the west and the dramatic rise of sacred mountains on the East. Those mountains were named Sandia, or melon, by Spaniards on a New World prowl for gold because the sunset pinkened them to a watermelon hue.

The tribe – some 3,000 strong in spanish conqueror Coronado’s time - were given that name, too, never mind that Green Reed was the name they called themselves. They had cultivated the land since at least the 14th Century. Times were not easy. By 1900 the tribe had shrunk to 74 souls, but now it is rebounding into prosperity and back to the size that Coronado found.

To what can this prosperity be attributed?  “Location, location, location,” Pueblo governor Lawrence Guitierrez says, a smile in his eyes. Before gaming reached the New Mexico Indian lands the Sandia Pueblo’s economic mainstay was aggregate – rocks and pebbles for construction.

To anyone plying I-25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe as those of us living to the north and catching airplanes must do, the Sandia progress was evident. First on the west side of the highway were expansive white tents – bingo parlors. They seemed, if not exactly sleazy, at least cheesy.

Then as time passed an edifice grew east of the highway, closer to the mountains which was to loom monolithically like the Chartres Cathedral across the plains -- at least when approached from the north where this new structure was visible for many miles before you reached its exit. Yet viewed from the south the building was dwarfed by the peaks and appeared as a respectful echoing of the mountains in shape and color tone. These dichotomous views seemed to be repeated metaphorically throughout the Sandia resort. Old, new, spiritual, crass. It keeps it interesting.

This mammoth building is the 70,000 square-foot Sandia Casino with the largest poker room in the state and an abundance of Las Vegas-style games, some 1700 slots and all space-ship color and sound familiar to those who are drawn, in slow-blink mode, to the now-electronic mysteries of winning and losing. (No one has Pac Man any more.)

The exterior of the Casino is splendidly curvilinear with a grand scale interpretation of Southwestern icons. A far cry from bingo tents.  Across from the Casino is a 4,200 seat amphitheater whose steeply rising tiers put everyone near the action on stage. Bookings are done in conjunction with the House of Blues with name entertainment outdoors, back-dropped by the mountains from late April to early October.

The most recent unfolding development of the Sandia development: a 228-room hotel attached to the Casino. Included is 50,000 square feet of meeting and convention space including a grand ballroom with a full theatre-style stage and the latest in sound and light technology (of interest for meeting planners.)

Of more interest to you as a visitor: the Scott Miller 18-hole Sandia Golf Club laid out between the hotel and the mountains with a pueblo-style clubhouse and patio for lunch. It’s a course with a view, the mountains off one shoulder, the Rio Grande Valley off the other. For warming up: a full-sized driving range with a double-tier tee area.

Indeed, all the amenities are rather what one would expect from a resort hotel but there’s a difference: the personnel.  Everyone has a simple pleasantness about them that puts the word “guest” in touch with its original meaning.

My room amplified that feeling. Large hotels, particularly those with such extensive convention facilities, often have a practiced proficiency about them that feels rather painted by the numbers. Tile, marble, wood.  Conveniences. But there was something else: a uniquely inviting warmth. My room richly balanced in dark and light with sink-into armchairs and custom furniture of craftsman-like squared dark wood, a distressed leather bench at the end of the bed with its crisp white linen and clay-red throw and shams with Southwestern designs felt somehow personal. I knew every other room was like this, but I fancied I was in a guest room in a rambling adobe ranch house, the domain of an old land-grant family comfortable with both history and wealth. I hoped to be clever enough at dinner to be invited back.

And I fell in love with the lamps, at bedside and on the desk. Handsome, yes, with square sides decorated with a raised eagle feather on each side. And knowingly functional, too.  Tall enough to allow the square shade to bathe a bed-reader’s book in light. And a switch low on the base within easy reach. AND an electric outlet next to the switch to free the recharging of cell phones or laptops from that knee-to-carpet routine of finding a place to plug everything in.

The lamp was an example of hacienda “guestliness” with hotel practicality. And the rooms have internet access -- either wi-fi or wired. And coffee service on the desk. And large flat-screen TV.

The sense of being a true guest at the Sandia Resort is enhanced by the presence of the host, the Sandia Pueblo. Those black and white photos throughout the hotel are not just anonymously atmospheric, they are real. They are actual members of the Sandia tribe, some are vintage scenes.   

If you seek more cosseting than the lazy pleasures of your room visit the Green Reed (a historic name) Spa just off the lobby downstairs. Work out if that is your wont or give yourself to the serene retreat with the soothing splash of water and wafting scents. A massage of the mind.  In some of the Spa’s special treatments indigenous New Mexico plants are used to meld a traveler’s spirit with the local essence.

There is life outside the resort. If you have no wheels, trans-portation can be arranged. Visit Albuquerque’s Old Town, everybody else does. How long since you’ve been to a state fair? The first week in October is the most photographed spectacle in the world: Balloon Fiesta, more than 500 of the colorful things fill the air. Or at night, tethered to the ground, glowing like special worlds in patterned sequence. And it’s just over the road from the Sandia Resort.

And just up the road is a wonderful aerial ride unequalled elsewhere. The Sandia Peak Tramway, the world’s longest of its type. The view is spectacular and hiking trails web out from the top. Or lunch at High Finance, the mountain top restaurant.

Speaking of food, and why not? The Bien Shur Restaurant back at Sandia is fine. And for northern New Mexican food at its unique best a rambling indoor- outdoor phenomenon called  El Pinto, an old family restaurant of world renown, is westward from the hotel on Tramway, which bends southward into 4 th street.

Did I mention that Santa Fe is just 45 minutes northward on I-25?
I just wish they sold those lamp’s at the hotel gift shop.