Nelson Park and Drake Springs Pool

This park visit has been a long time coming. It has been several years now that my children have been begging to visit this pool every time we pass the intersection of 10th Street and Cliff Avenue. I swear, though, every time, it is just crawling with people and it doesn't even look like it would be fun. Knowing we had to try it sometime, though, we decided Sunday, July 23rd, was the day.

It was absolutely perfect! The weather was beautiful, so I thought for sure the pool would be packed, but it really wasn't bad.

Unfortunately, we arrived just in time for a ten minute break. But I guess it gave us time to find a spot on the "grassy" hill. Note the quotation marks because the grass on the hillside was rather sparse. The big kids had a great time playing super heroes with their towels as capes and Baby G was rather proud of herself trying to stand up without assistance.

It was a riot to listen to them. They each had powers based on their towel, so I'd hear them saying, "Leah, with hula powers! Bo, with froggy powers!" I can't remember what Fletcher's powers were. Poor guy had the plain orange towel that day. Didn't stop him though!

Oh. And I forgot to mention that Bill worked on his sweet tan.

This one's going to be trouble. She won't be satisfied until she can keep up with the rest of them!

There was no need for us to discuss or go to a vote for what we would try first. Everybody agreed that the Lazy River looked like a great place to start! Even Grier loved riding along in the tube with me. Aside from a little bit of time spent in the zero-depth pool and Leah going down the big water slide a few times, pretty much our entire afternoon was spent on the Lazy River.




Even I got a chance to try the water slide. I honestly don't remember the last time I got to go on one. I remember watching with envy as people would go down the slide at the public pool in Lex, but I always seemed to be pregnant or holding a baby (or both) during the summers there. It's not like we go a lot of places with water slides, but even if we do, the kids always seem to want Dad along for those kinds of things, so I usually stay back with anyone who's too little to go. It was a big day for me. : )

The only bummer of the day was for poor Bo. He patiently waited his turn for the slide, only to be sent back down the stairs. He couldn't have missed the 48" mark by much, though. At his kindergarten check up a couple of months ago, he was 47". I told him it will be something fun to look forward to next year, but that doesn't really make it feel any better in the here and now. Oh well. Nothing another trip around the Lazy River won't fix!


And when we got out to take our sign picture, Leah just thought it would be lovely to take a picture by these flowers too.


I also want to say in this post, that the lifeguards and pool manager at this park had a great thing going on. As we were walking over to the Lazy River, I didn't catch exactly what was going on, but I turned to look when I heard the yelling. A young man in the pool was yelling, I think at the lifeguard, and she simply put her hand up in the air. Immediately, another lifeguard did the same, and within moments, the woman I assume was the pool manager was there and dealing with the boys who were causing trouble, so the lifeguards could go back to supervising the other swimmers. I never heard any yelling on the part of the staff and other than the fact that I heard that swimmer shouting, you never would have even known anything was going on. It was all dealt with so quickly and quietly. As we were leaving a short time later, I saw those same young men speaking with a Sioux Falls police officer in the parking lot. Thanks for keeping the pools a pleasant and safe place for those of us who don't (usually anyway) cause trouble!

Just a view of the zero-depth pool area. I didn't take any pictures of the kids actually swimming here, but it was fun. The Lazy River was just funner.