hotel towels

Harrison Hot Springs

On Thursday morning we left for Harrison Hot Springs Hotel and Spa at Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada.  It’s about a 3 hour drive from Seattle, so it is easy to forget we are going to another country.  Just as we were leaving, after many farewells and reassurances to old-man-Little-Bear that the catsitter was indeed on her way, Rick suddenly said, “Hey, guess what we almost forgot? Our PASSPORTS!”

The hotel, which sits on Harrison Lake and is dwarfed by mountains, is huge. There are four hot spring soaking tubs (two indoor and two outdoor) plus one large thermal swimming pool (outdoor).  The hotel provides white robes and white towels.  People clad in white are floating aimlessly (totally relaxed) all over the hotel.  There are people from all over the world here.  As I soak, I close my eyes and hear the murmur of many languages around me.  The sounds of Japanese, Korean, Ukrainian, Chinese, Persian, Turkish, French, etc, blend into the steam that rises around me.  I am in the Tower of Babel.  The tower seems to have a stream of music that drifts in and out of my ears.  The languages blend, become muted, and resemble the sound of a rushing river.  We soak in the morning and again late at night.  There is a warm thermal spring Olympic sized lap pool and I swim until I am filled with the happiness of a child floating, swimming, and flying.  The outdoor thermal pools are open until 11 pm. It is great to soak until late at night under the night sky.

Grandpa Pierce's letter to the editor in 1897

Hi everyone! I hope to post once a week if not more, we’ll see now won’t we? This will be a place for us to share family history… the truths, the half-truths, the family lore that hopefully holds more truth than fiction, though we all know that may not be so and even a few stories that we wish were true but deep down inside we know it can’t be so, or is it? I hope you will join me in this quest to find out about family history… and add your own thoughts, ideas, and opinions. It is only about 20 miles from this city, and a canal comes from the lake right into the heart of the city, and a straight unites it (Lake Pontchartrain) with the gulf, and the Illinois Central railroad crosses another straight that connects Lake Pontchartrain with Lake Maurepas, so that with a small steamboat one could easily go most anywhere, do you see? It was a Creole crew entirely, captain and all, and that generally means now the descendants of the old French settlers by their...