5 Year Anniversary!

I really need to get better at updating! It's been three months since I last updated! Oops! I originally stopped blogging because I ran out of blogger memory and couldn't upload photos. I mainly use my iphone camera now, so I can just upload my photos to flickr. So now I don't have an excuse for not blogging! Except for the fact that I'm usually busy! :P

Last weekend was my and D's 5th year wedding anniversary! How crazy is that?! We've been married for five whole years! Craziness!!! Mom and Dad generously offered to watch the shop so that we could get away for a couple days, which was extremely nice of them! Talk about the best anniversary gift ever! Originally, D and I were talking about visiting Niagara Falls. But D doesn't have his passport, we didn't really want to travel that far on a holiday weekend, plus hotel prices were outrageous, so we decided to do a staycation.  We ended up not really staying home though. Instead, we decided to pack our bags and randomly drive somewhere. D woke up really early Saturday morning and we were on the road probably before 10 am. We didn't know if we would come back home that night or spend the night somewhere. D loves being random and so his idea was to just start driving and see where we ended up. We mainly stayed on smaller roads, especially at first. I think we were only on a major interstate like once or twice.

So we ended up somewhere along the Indiana/Illinois border. We stopped at a flea market, where we found a couple good finds. It was so blessed hot and muggy! We drove on to this other small town that was filled with antique shops. I was super starving so we stopped at this little ice cream shop where we were waited on by this crotchity old woman.  We wandered in to an antique shop that was located in an old movie theater. It was pretty cool!

After that, we started driving southeast, back in to Indiana.  We went through a ton of tiny towns and spent most of the way on the back country roads.  Saw a bunch of watermelon, canteloupe, and pumpkin fields, which was pretty cool! At this point, I was really starving. D had eaten breakfast, but I hadn't so I was desperately chewing on breath mints to try to get some calories. haha. We finally got on a highway and ran across this peach orchard. They had a giant peach sculpture in front of their shop and seemed to be a cute little tourist attraction. We bought some peach cider, a couple fresh peaches, and fresh tomatoes.  We kept driving until about 6:00 and then realized that we were both getting pretty tired.  Since it was a holiday weekend, there were no vacancies at the hotels that we were wanting to stay in.  Diego had been driving all day and was getting super sleepy, I was trying to find a hotel on my phone while we were driving so was getting car sick and grouchy. So we decided to pull off at an exit to catch our bearings. Diego took a short little nap and I found a hotel in Lexington.  It was an hour drive, but I wanted to spend the night at a semi nice hotel and not just a cheap motel. We were right along the Indiana/Kentucky state line so it was some really pretty country side! As we were driving, we went past the Leavenworth exit.  We had stayed @ The Leavenworth Inn on our anniversary a few years ago, so  I decided to call and see if they had any vacancies. Surprisingly, they did! So that's where we decided to stay on Saturday night!

We had already passed the Leavenworth exit, so stopped in Corydon, IN  @ the Cracker Barrel and Walmart.  It started storming as we headed back to the inn. The gps wasn't accurate and so we had some trouble finding the inn, but finally made it! We got to stay in the main house this time around and it was really nice! There were some rocking chairs out on the front porch, so we sat out there just lisenting to the rain and enjoying the night. We had a King size bed and it was soooo comfy! We must have slept pretty well because we missed breakfast! haha

View of the Ohio River

So peaceful and pretty! 

We ate our fresh fruit for breakfast and decided to drive to French Lick, Indiana. They used to really well known for their mineral water and still have a couple big restorts.  I'd been wanting to see their atrium, so we decided to stop in since we were in the area.  We had tried to book a room at one of the hotels, but they were all booked for the weekend.  :( 

There are two hotels that are considered to be one resort:  one in French Lick and one in West Baden. We stopped at the one in French Lick first.  It was the newer hotel, but it was still really nice! We explored the hotel for awhile and kind of felt like trespassers, since we didn't have a reservation.  They had a ton of activities going on since it was a holiday weekend. One that we were really interested in was a $5 hot air balloon ride! But we weren't guests, so weren't able to go! There was a grand staircase leading up to the front door of the hotel and it was pretty fun to walk up it.  A lot of people had their pets with them and it just had the air of aristocracy/wealth and kind of a 50's feel. It reminded me of the movie 'Dirty Dancing' you know when families would go to these resorts for vacation.  Anyways, it was fun to explore the hotel! We made our way out back and saw the mineral water source.  There was a casino on site and we walked over there just to check it out, but left pretty quickly because the smell/noise was about to drive me insane. I don't know how people hang out in casinos for fun, it was very unappealing to me. 

Decided to drive over to the other hotel in West Baden.  It was absolutely beautiful and didn't look like it belonged in Indiana; rather, I could see it located somewhere in Europe.  It was a really odd sight just because it didn't seem to fit in.  I wish we had taken a picture of the front view, because it looked pretty amazing! We didn't spend as much time at the West Baden hotel, just looked at the atrium and the gardens. We then decided to head up to Spring Mill State Park! I had tried to book us a room at the inn there, but they were booked full as well.  But we decided to go explore their Pioneer Village.

Hotel in French Lick, Indiana

I loved the big porch!

Cool ceiling!

Source of mineral water

Back view of hotel

Reminded us of 'The Secret Garden'

I think they used to get mineral water from this?

Hotel in West Baden

Really, really cool! Some of the hotel rooms have balconies that lead out to this!

Me!

Diego!

Steps leading out to gardens

Garden area

Cool fountain

View from back parking lot

Waving goodbye as we head off to Spring Mill

Well, I will have to finish updating another day.  Maybe tomorrow? I'll tell you all about Spring Mill Park and the restaurant we went to in Zionsville.  We shot a lot of video, which I would really like to share here. But it might take awhile to get uploaded! D documented a lot on his phone, so I will need to get the files from him! He actually ran out of memory on his phone so I started taking some pics/videos on my phone until my phone ran out of memory too! haha

Okay, well I suppose I should go be productive.  D opened today, so I will be working the closing shift.  Happy Saturday, everyone! :)