The first weekend in May David took a couple days off of work, and we went on a little babymoon! David's parents kept Eli while we were away, and we headed 3 1/2 hours south to French Lick, Indiana. It was a wonderful trip! We enjoyed a beautiful country scenic drive on the way down, and the drive wasn't bad at all. Right before we made it to French Lick we noticed a really pretty courthouse in Orange County. David wanted to stop to take a picture, so I roamed through a gift shop and antique store. I was amazed at how similar it looked to the Nauvoo temple.
 |
| The lobby |
The gorgeous atrium. Hardly anyone there, and so nice and quiet. We enjoyed eating our lunch in there one day.
The atrium at night. Would have been so fun to be there during one of the piano concerts!
Ten minutes later . . .Amazing!
Our beautiful room overlooked the atrium. It was big and spacious, and of course looked like nowhere we've ever stayed before.
The bathroom was the best! Biggest one ever!
After we got settled in, we took the free shuttle over to the French Lick Resort (a neighboring fancy hotel) and explored it a little bit.
French Lick was made famous for its mineral spring water. People would come from all over and drink the spring water, believing it cured a myriad of maladies. They stopped selling it in the '70s, however, because it was found to have lythium in it, which wasn't a safe substance. Anyway, the mineral water (with sulfur in it) STINKS so terribly! Just walking on the grounds of the Resort was too much for me. How anyone could ever drink something that stinks so bad I'll never know!
The French Lick Resort was much more ornate on the inside (not my style). It was nice, but I was very happy we stayed where we did. The Resort had a casino, and was always bustling with people. But the Resort had most of the restaurants, so we usually went there to eat. They also had several shops, one of which was a candy store, which we visited frequently for free samples. : )
Really nice swimming pool! (At the Resort) I remember swimming here when I was a kid and we came down for a family reunion.
We ate dinner at the Power Plant Grill.
David workin' the switches.
We went swimming and enjoyed the hot tub at both of our hotels.
We were given a $30 credit for breakfast, so we ordered room service! Yum! I don't think it feels much fancier than that! : ) I wish we had taken the picture of us with our food. : )
On our second day there we headed out to explore the gardens of the West Baden. I just felt so at peace there. There was old-timey music playing up on the porches (like things you'd hear in the '20s or something), and there was no one else out on the grounds with us! It was a perfect weather day.
David brought his tripod, and set it up so we could actually get a picture together! The one and only from our trip. : (
There was a tree in the gardens that kept "snowing" on me while I was waiting for Dave to take pictures. I loved it and its tiny blossoms so much I had David take a picture.
French Lick was quite the place to be 100 years ago. It would have been fun to be there then.
A pretty window in one of the old buildings that used to hold a spring.
The West Baden Hotel was just too expensive with its up-keep when the Depression hit, so it was donated to the Jesuits, who used it as a seminary. They were the ones who closed up all the springs. There was a cemetery on the grounds where many of the original priests were buried. Many years later the Hotel was restored and reopened in 2006.
These next pictures are pretty silly, and I apologize for the overload of "me." David's the cameraman, and is always wanting me to pose for him. We explored this lovely library, and he had a few shots he had in mind. : )
That afternoon we decided to go on a hike. It was supposed to be a 2.5 mile hiker/mountain bike trail, but it was so poorly marked that we ended up going much longer! It was an incredibly frustrating experience. I had had all the hiking I could take when we thought/hoped our hike was surely about finished, only to realize we were far from being done. We had no water left, were hot and sticky in the wrong kind of clothes for a big ol' hike, and my feet hurt so bad I thought it'd be easier to just cut them off. Granted by that time I was CRANKY. We pushed along fast (somehow) and FINALLY made it outta there after hiking for 3 hours. Phew.
We came upon this little turtle as we were hiking. Glad it wasn't a snake! : )
All I wanted to do after that hike was check into our next hotel (we stayed at Comfort Suites our 2nd night) and get straight into the pool and hot tub again. Which is just what we did. : )
That evening for dinner we ate at Hagen's Club House, which was located on the Donald Ross Course. It was a really beautiful golf course, and we ate a delicious meal (right before a big thunderstorm hit).
We woke up Saturday morning to a cold, rainy day. : ( The weather had been SO perfect up til then, and we had hoped it could hold off just a couple more hours for us to do some things we had been looking forward to. There were bikes and surrey bikes to rent, and I had really wanted to go on a surrey ride. If it was just sprinkling it would have still been possible, but it was raining too hard. David had wanted to hit a bucket of balls at the driving range on the Pete Dye course, but unfortunately that didn't happen, either.
The Indiana Railway Museum was located right across from the Resort, so we decided it'd be fun to check it out, and maybe we could take a train ride. It turned out that it was hosting a special event. The Dinosaur Train was there (a show on PBS), and instead of $18, tickets were $29/person! It was too bad, because the normal train ride would have been really fun.
Sadly there was nothing else we could do so we ended up cutting our trip a little short and headed back early. It poured our entire way back to David's parent's house. I was pretty bummed about not getting to do the surrey ride, but we'll just have to go on one another day! It was still a terrific trip, and we enjoyed having time to spend together.
A picture David snapped of the small town of French Lick--
Eli especially enjoyed his time with his grandparents! I don't think he missed us too much since he was so busy playing! I'm so grateful that he did so well without us and that we didn't have to worry about him. Guess we should start planning our NEXT getaway then! ; )
No comments:
Post a Comment