Wilson Pool: Take a swim with the WHOLE city

Anytime we have 90 degree weather, the Villager begins to think longingly about sleeping at the office, or a nice air conditioned hotel room. I'd consider a tent in the backyard, but traffic's kind of heavy down my street at night, and our neighbors have been in a party mood lately. So other means of cooling off are required.

Enter Wilson Pool. We were out of town when the Grand Re-Opening happened, and that sounded a little crowded for our tastes anyway. So today was the day. After waiting impatiently for the noon opening time, we headed up the hill to Wilson High and approached the parking lot. This is when we were remiminded that the Hillsdale Farmers Market had recently relocated to the same general area. This made parking somewhat of an adventure. In fact it's a good thing the pool doesn't open before noon, or there would be no place to park at all.


We headed up the path behind the end zone of the football field and took our place in line. We were a little suprised at such a long line so early. Little did we know. That's Jr. Villager there in the hat, having discovered one of his favorite school friends ahead of us in line.


The pool has two main areas, the "regular pool" where a person would swim lapes if there had been maybe around 600 fewer people there, and the kids area seen above. The kids area is split into sort of four "themes". There's the shallow end with a large umbrella over the water (cool) and the little froggy slide, which Jr. Villager would not go down, since it sprays water at you at the top. There's the big water slide - not as big and fast as the one at the Southwest Community Center Pool, but good enough for today. And then there's the "current channel" and this cool vortex which was great at first, until too many people clogged it up. And last there is the deeper end of the shallow area where buckets periodically pour water onto the carefully positioned heads of "unsuspecting" parents.



Thoughts:

• We should have come for the grand opening, it could not have been more crowded than today
• The shallow end under the umbrella could stand to be about 6 inches deeper
• The water is VERY warm, since the pool is so shallow - however, this is also a result of the run of sunny days we've had in a row, so you know how that goes
• The entrance/exit process to the vortex is not graceful. Especially with four or five 12 year old kids thrown into the mix
• Apparently, you're not allowed to take the rafts that they have into the "current channel". I think there's been some false advertising here.
• Did I mention there were a lot of people there? We saw LOTS of people we know and the kids area of the pool became so crowded you literally could not move freely.

Apparently the best time to go is around 5PM on weekdays. It ain't cheap. You're looking at the standard fee of around $3 something per person (exact details on the site). Good news is (sarcasm) that a family membership can be bought, giving you all-you-can-swim until September for $163. Given that this is July 17th, you better prepare to swim a LOT, if you want to get your money's worth on that one.

According to Portland Parks & Recreation, Wilson Pool is the most popular outdoor pool, and the only one on the west side of Portland. I think we'll stick with the Southwest Community Center Pool though, which is more our "home pool" anyway, but Wilson Pool made for a fun Sunday field trip to Hillsdale.

One last note: This would be a pretty cool pool to have at your high school. My school had this whirpool bath in the guy's locker room that one football player at a time could sit in. Kinda looked like a cattle trough. That's the closest we got to a pool at school.