...And That Stands for Pool

One of the highlights of our trip to Iowa was a visit to the town pool. Now, here in New England, when you picture a municipal pool, you probably picture a standard rectangular pool, maybe with a few floating lane dividers for lap swimmers, and possibly a diving board at one end.

The Mason City pool is NOTHING like that. It does, in fact, have a rectangular pool with lane dividers for lap swimming, but that’s pretty much where the resemblance ends.

Note cousin Brad in the corner encouraging Ryan to smile for the camera.

The other side of the lap swimming pool has a low diving board, a high diving board, and a tubular slide.

Daddy goes off the high diving board

There’s another pool next to it with two high, long, looping, partially enclosed slides.

Cousin Jake makes a grand entry into the water – big loopy slides in the background

On the far side of THAT pool, there’s a play structure for smaller kids with a straight slide, floats to climb on, and adjustable squirting showerheads to run under.

Cousin David floating on a crab

Next to THAT, there’s a shallow area for tiny tots to splash in, and next to THAT there’s a jungle gym play structure for bigger kids.

Ryan and David were great pool buddies!

Two chilly, snuggly babies ready to head for home

Oh, and did I mention that it’s heated and has big, clean changing rooms with showers? And all the teenaged lifeguards were pleasant rather than surly. And the kids playing in the pool were polite to each other and played nicely, even with kids they didn’t know. And everyone threw away their own trash and didn’t use more chairs than they needed and kept an eye on each others’ kids and didn’t run on the pool deck and were just generally pleasant and charming to be around. It was like a big neighborhood block party.

It was just Terrific all around. With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool!