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We celebrated the end of the school year with a trip to a waterpark. A nearby county park (Independence Lake) had spent a few million dollars on a glorified sprayground and we decided to see how it compared to a real waterpark. A real waterpark has areas to swim, or at least submerge one’s self. This place keeps prices down by not having any standing water – liability costs are lower and the “lifeguards” do not have to have any certification.

What exactly does Blue Heron Bay have? The best answer for that is a panoramic photo:

Now for the tour. First up, welcome to Blue Heron Bay.

Lots of spray stuff:

Spray stuff for big kids:

And spray stuff for little kids:

There are umbrellas to shield you from water:

And there is an umbrella made of water:

(and there are umbrellas to shade the adults from the sun)

And the big-bucket-that-tips-periodically is a staple at waterparks these days:

Even though the park was only a few weeks old, the bucket-wheel thing had some problems. There are three sections – once one tips, the next section is supposed to fill with water. The problem was that the wheel would occasionally get stuck between sections, so water would fill two sections evenly, or no section at all, and then the wheel would not turn and there would not be any big splash. The park workers fixed this by poking the wheel with a long pole to get it move.

When we got there, the water slides were out if commission – being repaired. The plus side of that is the boys got to watch a cement mixer in action:

And it was a pleasant surprise that they opened the slides about an hour after pouring the concrete. They roped off the small area of new concrete, but we got to use the slides.

In case you are wondering, the blue slide is much better. It doesn’t look as fun as green, because it doesn’t have as many turns, but don’t let that fool you. Blue has a steeper slope, so you actually get some speed. On the green slide, I thought I was going to stop at some points. And I was tempted to stand up and start walking because I was going so slowly. Maybe some young kids who have some fears about water slides will appreciate the green slide. Other information: the green slide is open and the blue slide is enclosed the whole way.

There was another water slide, much shorter, at the base of the bucket-wheel. It was actually faster than the big green slide. It was the only slide my 4-year-old would go down. Since he was shorter than the minimum 42″ for the big slides, it was also the only slide he could go down.

The water features of any particular section turn off after several minutes, and someone has to go press a button to re-enable the action. The buttons are not tactile, so you can’t tell when you’ve actually pressed it. I got the best results when I held down the button for about 5 seconds. Find the “play” triangle and press that.

Here’s the view of Independence Lake, from the patio of Blue Heron Bay:

The sprayground is not close to the beach – you have to get your hand stamped, leave, and drive to it. So plan on doing either one or the other.

One last tip: if you buy meat from the concession stand, tell the grillers how you want it cooked. One of our burgers was more pink than we were comfortable with.

The guys who made our burgers followed their procedure very well – checked the meat temperature with a thermometer probe thingy. When the burger was the correct temperature, they declared it done and served it to us. I don’t think the guy had much experience with food or wanted to train as a chef – he just got a job at the county park and this was his assignment. So my tip for people going to the park is this: help the guy out. Give him instruction. He’s just cooking it to the minimum safe temperature. So tell him, when he starts, that you like your burger well-done so please cook it a few degrees hotter than usual. And if he balks, ask where the tip jar is.

I am also putting the concession stand menu online. Before our trip, I wanted to see what was available, food-wise, and for how much. The Blue Heron Bay website just said “menu coming soon” even though they had been open for a couple weeks already. So here is the menu:

I think that’s everything. The only thing I know I forgot was to get a picture of the park from the top of the slide tower.

Go enjoy Blue Heron Bay. Just don’t go when we want to go – I don’t want it too crowded.

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