Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Weekend on a Budget - Swimming

A weekend on a budget is easy if your kid loves to swim! Here locally, we have a beautiful swimming pool - it's the Ella Redkey Pool. It's open year round. It's geothermally heated (which basically means it's heated by the energy stored in the earth I think). 

It's gorgeous. Blue clear water and a fun slide if your kid can pass the height test:
Nate at the top waiting to slide down


It has a grassy area with picnic tables if you bring your own food. In keeping with our budget theme, I packed PB&J sandwiches, apples, and potato chips plus I filled our water bottles. 


Nate takes a break from swimming

 There are no lounge chairs (much to my dismay). I chose to sit up in the "bleachers" and watch Nate while reading my book. The bleachers do have a cover over part if you choose to sit in the shade. I chose to sit in the sun....despite SPF 30, I'm burned. 
You can see the bleachers behind the kids.
The lifeguard challenged them to a cannonball contest -
biggest splash wins! 
This was a great way to spend our Saturday. Open swim was 11 to 2 and it cost us $6. My only gripe (and it's a small one) is that they charged me to get into the pool even though I wasn't swimming. 

Interesting note about the Ella Redkey: Having lived in Klamath for 9 years, I often hear that the pool was paid for by funds from a red-light district. I had to look that up though and it's "mostly false" according to the museum website. Most of the pool was paid for by a tax levy passed by voters in 1952. Two years later as the pool was nearing completion, the newspaper reported about the Civic Improvement Fund that had been collected by the city from houses of ill repute for about 4 years. Come to find out most of that money went to fund a jail but there were some dollars that went to the pool among other things. The pool was named for Ella Redkey, a widely respected youth leader who was the first manager of the pool. 

Interesting huh? 

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