One of the parks and rec pools the next town over has a Volcano/Tiki themed pool. Its actually a couple of different pools, with several slides, a playground in the pool and some other cool features. Its also next to a mini-golf course. We go there once or twice a summer, just to shake things up around here. Today was our first journey there this season, and will probably be our last.
Everytime you go to these big public pools, the parking lots are full of camp buses. Kids in all-day summer camps come from all over to go to these pools. I have nothing against camps. Kids with full time working parents need something constructive to do during the summer and there are some really awesome camps out there.
However, the problem with a lot of the camps - the kids are so not supervised. AT all. There are teenage counselors responsible for 10 or 12 kids a piece, and no one is watching any of them. Today we watched two small kids (two separate incidents) be pulled out of the deep end. Clearly they couldn't swim at all, yet no one had been watching them or keeping them out of the pool, or at least keeping them in the shallow part.
I have so many problems with this whole scenario. First of all, why would a parent ever let their child who can't swim go on a camp field trip to a POOL? Ugh. If its a pool day field trip, make other arrangements, take the day off to go with them so you know they are watched and safe, or ask the camp if the kids who don't know how to swim will be watched especially carefully.
Next, all of those bodies in the pool, no one is taking or enforcing bathroom breaks. A loose turd is inevitable. It happens every time. And today was no exception. Thankfully we had been there a couple of hours before the poo incident and were highly ready to leave anyway. We hightailed it out of there at the first mention of poop.
A few summers ago, my Mom and I took the boys to one of these waterparks. It was packed out the wazoo, but we made the most of it, wrestling our turns for lazy river innertubes. 12 hours later we were all puking and diarrhea. You put hundreds of kids in a pool and the likelihood of encountering some sort of plague is so much higher than at a more low key, less populated neighborhood pool. That whole rule about "don't enter the pool if you've been sick within the past few days" all goes out the window with the campers.
Also, these kids are not supervised and many of them are literally running wild. Which is of course, against the rules. So the lifeguards, who are supposed to be watching the kids IN the pool water, are busy blowing their whistle every 5 seconds at the kids running across the pool deck. Or blowing their whistle at the kids hanging on the ropes in the pool because they DON'T KNOW HOW TO SWIM.
We've been home for a few hours now but I can still hear the whistle blowing in my mind. I wonder what the summer to summer lifeguard return rate is at these big public pools. I'm guessing not very high.
The pool we went to today has a mini-golf course next to it. We played after our picnic lunch. It was sunny and really hot, so no one else was there. That was the best part of the day. That, and the ice cream we got at Friendly's after the poo in the pool incident.
But the pool itself. Not fun. Not even a little bit. Tomorrow we head to my Moms pool, which is always delightful and practically deserted. Ahhhhhh!
The big bucket fills and dumps every few minutes. My boys love this part.
Logan LOVES some mini-golf action. If we turned our backyard into a half lazy river, half putt putt golf course, we'd never have to go anywhere again.
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