{"id":8395,"date":"2018-07-16T22:47:42","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T22:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=8395"},"modified":"2018-07-16T23:01:45","modified_gmt":"2018-07-16T23:01:45","slug":"knee-deep-in-summer-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=8395","title":{"rendered":"Knee Deep in Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Holy moly.\u00a0\u00a0 July 4th has already come and past and we are knee deep in Summer and it is speeding toward Autumn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t even feel like we celebrated the fourth even though we had a picnic and pool party and we saw fireworks from our back porch for a week.\u00a0 One evening the fireworks were every bit as good as our city puts on every year and we didn’t have to listen to the awful music they play during their fireworks.\u00a0\u00a0 Someone had a lot of fireworks because they were exploding for days before the fourth and days afterward. Belle and Molly did not like it much.\u00a0 I was pretty much over fireworks by the fourth, too.<\/p>\n

I did manage to make some patriotic looking sugar cookies. My grandkids love these.<\/p>\n

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It was a spur of the moment thing which is pretty much how I roll anymore.<\/p>\n

David and I celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary on the 7th.\u00a0 Fifty years!\u00a0 How can that be?\u00a0 We have gone through a lot together in those fifty years.\u00a0\u00a0 Joys, sorrows, tragedies, accidents, blessings and more.\u00a0 I wouldn’t want to live it all over again, but it’s been a very interesting fifty years.\u00a0 We have had a lot of fun too and gotten to travel a lot and since we both love to travel, it’s been great.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think about starting all over again and I think, “Nope, don’t want to go there.”\u00a0\u00a0 I look to the future and I know what my eternity holds so it’s all good.\u00a0 There will probably be more\u00a0good times as well as bad times.\u00a0In fact, my sister- in -law, my oldest brother’s wife, just passed away this morning.\u00a0\u00a0 She has lived without Jack for several years so I can imagine the reunion in Heaven today.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She was one of the last few people who remembered me when I was a kid.\u00a0 She married my brother when I was five or six years old.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I use to spend time at their house when I was a kid and play with their next door neighbor’s kids.\u00a0 Carroll was always so nice to me.\u00a0 I will miss her, but I look forward to seeing her again one day.<\/p>\n

Anyway, David and I celebrated our fiftieth by going to West Baden Springs in southern Indiana.\u00a0 In the early part of last century some businessman got the idea to build a big hotel surrounding the mineral springs that were there.\u00a0 People would come from all over to drink the water and bathe.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The hotel was many things during the century.\u00a0 It was a hospital,\u00a0 a Jesuit school,\u00a0 soldiers were housed there during one of the wars.\u00a0 The Jesuits blocked up all the Springs. The hotel fell into disrepair.\u00a0 Then several years ago, someone decided to resurrect the building once more and bring it back to the grandeur of its heyday.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My son-in-law’s place of business provided all the new carpet throughout the hotel and repaired much of the tile that was damaged or missing.\u00a0 Here are a few pictures of the hotel now.<\/p>\n

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Wish I had brought my swimsuit.<\/p>\n

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Wish I looked like this in a swimsuit!<\/p>\n

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The carpets were beautiful.<\/p>\n

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I never could get a full picture of the hotel. It is huge and very beautiful. This picture does not do it justice at all.<\/p>\n

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This was in the atrium, a huge room with sofas and chairs where you could sit and look at all the beauty.<\/p>\n

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This was a balcony looking over the atrium.<\/p>\n

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Statues all around the atrium.<\/p>\n

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There was a billiard room where you could play billiards.<\/p>\n

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At one time they had\u00a0shoeshine men\u00a0and men would sit on this marble stand and get their shoes shined.<\/p>\n

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The halls to the rooms were luxurious.<\/p>\n

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There were flower gardens everywhere. It was so beautiful outside.<\/p>\n

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At one time there was a barbershop in the hotel.<\/p>\n

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These are some of the dishes they used in the restaurant and for room service back in the day.<\/p>\n

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Some of the commemorative plates they sold.<\/p>\n

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Big, wide porches you could sit on and watch the world go by.\u00a0 I didn’t get to do this. Must go back.<\/p>\n

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Fountains on the vast lawn.<\/p>\n

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These lights lined the drive.<\/p>\n

Now David and I are more Best Western and Comfort Inn kind of travelers. We don’t stay in luxury hotels, well, not ever.\u00a0\u00a0 But this was our fiftieth anniversary and we splurged for a wonderful night at a wonderful place and we are so glad we did.<\/p>\n

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When we got in our room there were flowers on the table and I thought, “How nice of the hotel to have flowers in the room.”\u00a0 Then I saw another vase of flowers and thought, “Wow, they really go overboard here.”\u00a0\u00a0 I lay down on the bed and David said, “Aren’t you going to look at the flowers?”\u00a0 And I said, “I looked at them, aren’t they pretty?”\u00a0 And then David said, “Aren’t you going to read the card?”\u00a0 and I said, “There’s a card?”\u00a0 Then\u00a0 I read the card and realized David had had flowers sent to the room. Oh, my.\u00a0 Then I read a card next to the other flowers that read “Happy Anniversary” and we both thought they were from the hotel.\u00a0\u00a0 Then I found a card behind those flowers and discovered the second vase of flowers were from our children so I called our oldest son to thank him and he asked us if we liked the chocolate covered cherries and I said we hadn’t gotten any.\u00a0 He said there were supposed to be twenty-five flowers in the vase and twenty-five chocolate covered cherries for David in the room.\u00a0 Hmmmm.<\/p>\n

We left to do some exploring around the hotel and when we got back to our room there was a plate with twenty-five chocolate covered cherries waiting.\u00a0\u00a0 I think our son did some calling.<\/p>\n

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That same day we went to an elephant ranch.\u00a0 Yes, elephants right smack dab in the middle of the country in southern Indiana.\u00a0 These are rescue elephants who spend their Summers in Indiana and their Winters in Florida.\u00a0\u00a0 I was so excited about getting up close and personal with them.\u00a0 While we waited our turn to see the elephants we looked at the other animals in the petting zoo they had there.<\/p>\n

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Goats.<\/p>\n

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Mama kangaroo.<\/p>\n

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Baby kangaroo.<\/p>\n

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A tortoise who really wanted out of his cage.<\/p>\n

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There were giraffes. This one was slobbering so badly and throwing his slobber several\u00a0feet from his pen.\u00a0\u00a0 I stood waaay back from this guy.\u00a0 Or girl.\u00a0 I don’t know.<\/p>\n

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Giraffes sure do have a pretty coat.<\/p>\n

And my all time favorite was there at the petting zoo.<\/p>\n

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A chicken who didn’t seem all that thrilled about being caged with the goats.<\/p>\n

Finally our time came to get on the bus to ride to where the elephants were and this is the\u00a0funny part.\u00a0 The elephants were probably a block away from where we were. We could have walked there\u00a0just as easily.\u00a0 We laughed about that.<\/p>\n

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We all sat on bleachers while a man told us all about elephants.\u00a0 He takes care of these elephants both in Indiana and Florida and use\u00a0to take care of elephants in India.\u00a0 He knew all about elephants.\u00a0 They are such majestic creatures.<\/p>\n

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What kind of people kill these animals just for their ivory tusks?\u00a0 It’s terrible.\u00a0\u00a0 Don’t buy anything made with ivory.<\/p>\n

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These creatures are extremely intelligent and once they have met you, they will never forget you. I tried to be sure one of the elephants got to know me. I hope my image is imprinted on her mind forever.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 It was so amazing to be in the same room with three of these wonderful animals.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I got to pet them and they have very thick, stiff hairs on their bodies.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I told the lady she was blessed to get to work with elephants every day and she said it gave her great joy.<\/p>\n

When evening came we sat in the atrium at the hotel and listened to sixties and seventies music played by these guys.<\/p>\n

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They were really good. They sang the Everly Brothers’ song, “Dream” and David and I sang along with them.\u00a0\u00a0 Made me feel like I was a teen-ager again.\u00a0 Ha.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day we were really tired and went to our room where this very comfortable bed awaited us.<\/p>\n

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And should I have needed to call someone from the bathroom, there was a phone nearby!<\/p>\n

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We had a suite and I had to\u00a0walk through two rooms to get to\u00a0the bathroom.\u00a0 I was hoping I wouldn’t get lost during the night.<\/p>\n

I don’t usually sleep well the first night in\u00a0a new bed, but David and I both fell fast asleep and slept all night.\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, when I went to take a shower and came back to the room,\u00a0David had fallen asleep already.\u00a0 So much for romance!\u00a0 Haha.<\/p>\n

And when we checked out the following morning, someone had paid for our room.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 What a wonderful anniversary we had.<\/p>\n

Here’s to anniversaries and grand hotels.\u00a0Bye.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holy moly.\u00a0\u00a0 July 4th has already come and past and we are knee deep in Summer and it is speeding toward Autumn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t even feel like we celebrated the fourth even though we had a picnic and pool party and we saw fireworks from our back porch for a week.\u00a0 One evening the fireworks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-travels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8395"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8484,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8395\/revisions\/8484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}