DocAndersen
Today a trip to French Lick Indiana. Well, a trip to West Baden. Minneapolis, Minnesota, has a twin city, St Paul. A bridge connects them. They are two large cities that are often called the Twin cities. In Indiana, there are smaller Twin Cities, French Lick and West Baden Indiana. The two have grown together, but neither of them is huge. One is famous for the hot springs that people from Chicago used to flock to use. The other was famous for at the time have one of the most opulent hotels built in Southern Indiana. Also, West Baden had hot springs, just like French Lick. But the hotel in West Baden was the most interesting back in the 1930s.
Over the years before we left Indiana for Ohio, and while we were in Ohio, we often wandered to French Lick for mini-vacations. The pictures today are of the snow, at the West Baden hotel, that is now renovated but then was not renovated (2004). We wandered to the hotel to take the tour of the multiple failed attempts to rebuilt the hotel. One group stripped everything that was a luxury item trying to sell those to fun the renovation. Another group renovated part of the hotel and opened a CIA. Not part of the CIA. Rather a cooking school part of the Culinary Institute of America sometimes shorted to the same initials as the US spy agency!
This particular mini-faction was just my wife and I. We droved to Bloomington and dropped the kids off with my parents. We then wandered down to French Lick. It French Lick, has several interesting things. Ther is a famous old hotel because once upon a time, Al Capone and other Chicago Gangsters used to come and vacation at the hotel. It famous as well for the West Baden hotel, and on this trip, we took the tour of the devastated building. It is just a short drive from Frehcn Lick to Lake Patoka, where we often spent a week on a houseboat when the kids were little. I sound like a tourist brochure, the other thing in French Lick is the train museum that has tracks and working trains!
Cool bird house, like a hotel!
they have many of them, they are the actual model of the hotel itself!