Plan B

It is HOT in Iowa. We had some fall-like weather in July and again in mid-August, but this week has been pushing triple digits. It makes me not want to go outside. And a bit grumpy. Poor Jonah spends his days bringing me his shoes, then pointing at the door and pleading, "Wook (walk). Cuh (car). Pay (please)." I know winter is coming, and so we had better get outside while we still can. But for my own sanity it was going to have to involve water.

Last week I discovered (the hard way) that the public pools are closed. Major bummer. I guess it makes sense that when the majority of your lifeguards and customers go back to school, it is not logical to remain open - but really poor timing with this late-summer heat wave. However, I had heard about a new recreation area that opened up south of Iowa City, which includes a lake with paddle boat, canoe and kayak rentals. It seemed closer than the nice(-ish) beach north of Iowa City and nicer than close(-ish) beach west of us. Win!

I packed up Jonah and all of our gear and headed over to the southeast side of town. Jonah LOVES to swim, so when he saw me packing up his trunks and floaty raft, he got excited. We pulled into the new recreation area, and I was pleasantly surprised. It is a beautiful setting, lots of trees, a nice, big lodge...and notably - NO beach! There was no swimming area. In my defense, this was the map that I looked at before we drove all the way over there:

In retrospect, I see now that this is from a 2010 "Master Plan" for the area...and in all likelihood not an accurate rendering of the finished product. But no less a bummer for this hot, frustrated mama and her confused, I-thought-we-were-going-to-swim toddler standing in the parking lot, overlooking a lake, in which they could NOT swim. And (as mentioned before), all the pools were closed. And it was already 90 degrees at 10:30 in the morning.

But we persevered. On to Plan B. Since we had already driven all the way across town, we drove a little further to the splash pad. I was a little hesitant, because we had only been to the splash pad once before, and Jonah spent the entire time standing off to the side watching. He did get wet a few times when the water turned off momentarily and he accidentally wandered into the line of fire before someone hit the reset button, causing the spray to come back on and sending Jonah running out of the way. (I sort of knew that this was probably because I spent that time in the shade catching up with my friend, Bridget, while her kids actually played in the water, instead of showing Jonah how fun it could be.) But this trip I had my suit on, and by the time we arrived, I was HOT. So I coaxed Jonah into the (freezing!) water to cool off. He hesitated...for just a few seconds, and then he LOVED it. Once this kid is in, he's all in. Pure excitement.

Sure, we didn't get to swim that day. But we did get cool off and have an awful lot of fun doing it. With these extreme temps, it feels like summer is just getting started. But I know soon it will be Fall and cooler days and hoodies and long pants. So we're soaking it up...mostly from inside an air conditioned building :)