Let's Go Swimming!

Hope you enjoyed your time with family and friends celebrating July 4th. We followed our family traditions, missing our friends that usually joined us for the festivities, but this year are driving their moving truck across the continent to Michigan.  Our day was filled by hiking, BBQing, gathering with our neighbors and at dusk walking down to the sports fields with our neighborhood for the fireworks.  

Even though a couple of past years have been exceptions to the rule, the PNW summer tends to begin after July 4^th, and this morning the sun was finally shining from blue skies and the temp hit 68 degrees way before 10 AM. Hello, summer! We missed you. Today we are packing or bags, loading the cooler with snacks and cold drinks and heading to the pool, this is what we’ve been waiting for ever since school ended.

There are a few pools in the area but the Cottage Lake Pool is the only one I've ever been to. It's clean, it's outdoors and hey, it's the YMCA. They have open swim daily, and for non members the fee is $6 per person. Members pay $3 per head. If you're not a swimmer, I do want to caution you as a child under 14 years old has to have a grownup in the pool with them unless they pass the swim test. This is what the YMCA pool schedule states: Children 13 years of age and younger MUST pass a swim test administered by the lifeguard or be accompanied by an adult in the water who is “actively engaged” with the child’s activity.

We haven't made it out to my other favorite - Pine Lake Park - yet. Pine Lake is a smallish lake on the Sammamish Plateau. It's usually warmer than other lakes in the area, the water is clear and usually quite clean. Lifeguards are on duty daily from 12 PM to 7 PM between father's day and Labor Day.  They have divided the beach to 3 zones, the splash area, the knee to waist depth and the deep area. In order to get to the deep zone kids will have to pass a swim test but as long as they stay in the 2 shallow zones they don't have to have an adult joining them in the water.  The beach park has an interesting history as it used to be a private resort  "The Pine Lake Resort" and later in 1930's "LePine Resort" that was purchased by King County in mid-1960's and then transferred to the City of Sammamish when the city incorporated in 1999.