Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Hidden Treasures

Sunday, my mom took Ula, Blaze, and I on a day trip to French Lick and West Baden, Indiana.
Hidden away among tree covered, rocky hills are these two tiny towns, each with a huge, gilded, luxury hotel, where movie stars and presidents of a bygone era once came for "the cure". There were mineral springs located at both hotels and the water was even bottled and sold around the country.
The water from French Lick was bottled as "Pluto Water".
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The spring is still there,

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But people are no longer supposed to drink it because it was found to contain Lithium. That didn't stop one man we spoke to there, though. He had rigged up a glass measuring cup on a rope, so he could scoop out the water and drink it, much to the embarrassment of his teenage daughter.

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This was the original spring:
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This is the magnificent hotel located at French Lick, but I would consider this the lesser of the two hotels:

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The hotel at West Baden boasted 4 springs and the biggest dome in the world at the time that it opened. The springs are no longer there, because it was a monastery for many years and the monks filled in the springs. It still has a very impressive dome, though. It has been renovated recently, back to the way it was in its glory days, and just opened to guests again a year ago.

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