Wet Hot Texas Summer

Pools have been largely decorative for me in my post–Marco Polo years. I believe that once one turns thirty, unless one is a lap swimmer (nope) or accompanied by children (double nope), a pool is a place to drink near and pee in. 

But on my first visit to the world’s largest spring-fed pool, at West Texas’s Balmorhea State Park, an hour northeast of Marfa, I splashed around for two hours. Though much of the park is closed for renovations, the 1.3-acre pool reopened last summer. The water, which rarely dips below 72 degrees, teemed with fauna. It was so clear in the deepest part, 25 feet below me, I could see a turtle clambering over the lush vegetation. The pool was thick with small fish who side-eyed the snorkelers. A man floated by in a doughnut tube, giggling. “The fish are nibbling me—I can feel them nibbling me!” he shouted to his kids. He stopped giggling. “It’s a little weird.”

After I climbed out, another solo Balmorhea-goer passed by. He was an alternate-universe McConaughey—grizzled, lanky, a little overcooked—in a black Speedo, an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, and reflective blue sunglasses. “Good day forrit,” he said with a nod.

Is there a bad day forrit? —Lauren Larson

I admit to being a little reluctant to write about my favorite swimming spot in Texas. It’s blissfully uncrowded. I’ve never seen more than a handful of swimmers there, even on a scorching Saturday in July. If word got out, would that change? My hope is that Utopia Park’s far-flung location in the tiny town—Utopia’s an hour and a half from San Antonio, four from Houston, and six from Dallas—will help keep things just as they are.

A lush, verdant canopy of live oaks casts ample shade over this small community park along the Sabinal River. The river here is dammed, ensuring that the water stays deep enough for visitors to leap safely off one of several well-worn rope swings that dangle from tree limbs. On a recent visit, I noticed a deer watching me from the banks as I steered my paddleboard upriver. Passing a picturesque little cabin with a rocking chair on the porch, I fantasized about what my life might be like if that were my home. A pair of mallards paddled by, quacking and wiggling their tails as if they were late for an important meeting, while three turtles in a row snoozed on a sunny branch. The water was gin-clear, making it easy to see each inquisitive little fish that nibbled at my board.

After swimming and paddling, I like to unpack a picnic at one of several tables under the live oaks. There’s also a nifty tree-house playground. Tent and RV camping is available, as are screened-in shade structures for rent—“cabins” would be too grand a word, but they’ll keep the bugs out. A day pass costs $10, a bargain for the sense of tranquility the park offers.

To make a weekend of it, there are quite a few attractions within a half-hour drive, including Garner State Park, Lost Maples State Natural Area, and a slew of tubing outfitters along the Frio River in Concan. But I like to keep things simple. When I can set my tube afloat, pop open a cold drink, close my eyes, and listen to the breeze gently stir the cypress branches overhead, Utopia Park is bliss. I don’t need to be anywhere else. —Rose Cahalan

Around 2,500 years ago, nomads in the valleys of Central Asia invented polo, a game played on horseback that was later refined in India, and whose one lasting contribution to the culture as we know it is a short-sleeved shirt worn with its collar popped by the villains in eighties movies. In the nineteenth century, British lads began playing a new game with the same name but on rivers and lakes—and so was birthed water polo. Then, 36 years ago, water polo was revolutionized when a group based in rule-abiding Switzerland decided on bylaws for playing the game in kayaks, formally trading the swimming nonsense for a faster game, one played above water and thus easier to watch.

When I first started playing kayak polo in the summer of 2020 and told friends about it, they’d act as if I were speaking gibberish. I’d tell them it was simple and to sound it out: kayak polo is polo played in kayaks. The pitch is a body of water ideally 23 by 35 meters, set off by buoys or landmarks. Two teams of five kayakers, with watertight nylon spray skirts, in sit-in boats that can roll, compete during two 10-minute halves. The game is quick because it is intense. Each team tries to get the ball (about the size of a soccer ball) into one of two nets, which hover a couple of meters above the water at either end of the pitch. You can pass the ball with your hands or by scooping it out of the water with your paddle blade and flinging it, trebuchet-style.

You can dribble but can’t paddle when you have the ball in hand, so the key to success is learning how to give yourself the correct angular momentum before you catch or pick it up, so that you can coast with it. Defense usually involves ramming into the ball carrier’s boat and pushing them off their course. One of the other defensive strategies is pushing someone who has the ball, forcing them to capsize and have to roll back up—at which point, if you’ve done things correctly, you push them underwater again. Being in that death spiral isn’t fun, but it does cool you down. There is no better way to exercise in the Texas summers, for which the game was seemingly intelligently designed.

The most comfortable place on a scorching day in East Texas might be fifteen feet below the surface of Huntsville’s Blue Lagoon, about eighty miles north of Houston. Really two lagoons, it caters to scuba divers. The former limestone quarries are filled with rainwater to a maximum depth of about thirty feet, and yes, the water is a beautiful, glassy blue at the surface, though sometimes it can get murky below eighteen feet or so. There’s very little aquatic life, but the natural surroundings are pristine. Blue Lagoon is owned by a private company; its on-site scuba school offers internationally recognized certification courses. Entrance fees are $21 per diver at the park, which opens at 8 a.m. on weekends and 10 a.m. on weekdays. —Josh Alvarez

The best thing about good-looking people is that they tend to draw even more good-looking people. So it is with Party Island, a gathering of hundreds in the middle of Austin’s Lady Bird Lake. On a 97-degree Saturday afternoon in the middle of May, legions of hotties had appeared near Lou Neff Point. Most balanced on paddleboards, though some peacocked with more elaborate floatation devices.

The first time I saw the “Brotilla,” so dubbed by Redditors, I was canoeing on the lake in 2020, during the oppressive juncture of the COVID-19 pandemic when there was nowhere to socialize but outside, but outside was too hot. My boyfriend and I navigated our canoe through the floaters gingerly, like we were in the returned lifeboat in the final scene of Titanic. Party Island was less populous then, as was Austin, but even so, there were bodies as far as the eye could see, shimmering on the horizon. The mass has grown each subsequent summer. From Lamar Boulevard Bridge, downriver, Party Island is visible in all its crowded glory, fanning out from its jam-packed center like the Spiral Jetty.

For the most part, I had avoided Party Island since my first foray, chiefly because I do not wish to marinate in the fluids of my fellow man. That afternoon in May, I voiced this concern to someone who looked like a Party Island veteran. He was wearing sunglasses, but I could tell he was rolling his eyes. “You look like an ocean girl,” chimed in his friend, who was visiting from Florida, from atop a nearby paddleboard. “This is no worse than the ocean.” But it is. Later in the afternoon, as I stood waist-deep in the water, watching a fantastic black Lab named Pearl swimming laps in the channels between floats, a Good Samaritan alerted me to an alarming sight rising behind the poo-petrator.

But most of the party dogs perched harmlessly on paddleboards in canine life vests, and most attendees seemed unperturbed by the gross realities of stewing in the broth of the masses for an afternoon. One seasoned Brotilla-goer had arrived that morning, before the crowds of floaters assembled, to inflate and dispatch a vast pink raft with a sparkly floor. Now adrift in the center of the horde of paddleboards, the raft looked like a conversation pit in a Barbie house. In aerial photos taken of Party Island that day, the raft is clearly visible on the northeast side of the flotilla; it was probably visible from space. Half a dozen young men and women lounged in it, drinking and surveying their surroundings.

Bottlenose dolphin sightings are easy to come by in Port Aransas. Within a minute of entering the busy Corpus Christi channel between Port A and Aransas Pass this spring, our guides aboard a pontoon boat from Scarlet Lady Dolphin Adventures drew our attention to the dorsal fins all around us. The passengers offered plenty of help.

“Dolphiinnnn!!!” shouted a toddler.

“There’s one!” whispered one man.

“Here’s two!” shouted a woman.

After everyone on board had spotted at least one, my next order of business was to grab a drink at the bar so that I could properly lounge and take in the scenery as the captain drove us out near the jetty, the Lydia Ann Lighthouse, and San José Island, a private property with public beaches.

Along the way, the crew doled out educational tidbits. Some of the pods were groups of males, a guide said, while others were mamas and their calves curling up to the surface in coordinated pairs for a sip of air before diving back down for as long as eight minutes. We were impressed that we were seeing so many fins—until we heard the captain say that often the mammals will jump out in front of the many passing cargo ships and play in the waves. Alas, they didn’t do this for us during our brief tour.

Just as I started fantasizing about hopping off the boat and, like a mermaid, grabbing the fin, the guide, who must have been familiar with that particular daydream, announced that feeding or swimming with dolphins was a crime and that domesticating them was dangerous to their well-being. Busted.

By the time we returned to the dock after an hour and a half at sea, we’d seen a few dozen dolphins—enough to make me wonder how many more I could observe if I had a whole day on the water. —Katy Vine

Just off the Texas coast, the marine life is probably wondering what’s up with all the glowing kayaks. Zack Jurasek, who last fall began offering nighttime tours in transparent plastic kayaks equipped with bright-colored lights, says that baitfish, black drum, and stingrays occasionally come in for a closer look. “The dolphins are very curious about the lights too. We’ve had them follow us around,” he says. GlowRow tours, lasting an hour or so, are available in mostly shallow waters around Corpus Christi, North Padre Island, Port Aransas, Port O’Connor, and Rockport from March to November. Paddlers can pick from seven colors—or set the lights to “house party” mode and rotate through all of them—but the critters seem to prefer green and aquamarine. Tours start at $40. —Pam LeBlanc

The state’s rivers and lakes have their funky charms, yes, but sometimes all you want is a clear, cold, inviting swimming pool. And sometimes you’d prefer that it be a little more, shall we say, peaceful than the local public option, with its enthusiastic horseplay and flotilla of detached Band-Aids. You might conclude that the next best thing to a private pool is an adult-only pool at a hotel or resort. But that concept can mean different things to different people. As can the word “adult.”

Perhaps you and your book arrive early in the morning at your selected pool, which you briefly have all to yourself until a young woman settles into a nearby lounge chair, fires up her phone, hits speaker, and launches into an hour-long conversation, the gist of which is “OMG I got a resort pass, and I’m having a daycation!!!” Or maybe you’ve just closed your eyes when a dozen groomsmen toting contraband cigars settle in behind you. Perchance you’re enjoying the view of rolling hills beyond the vanishing-edge pool when you notice that the at-capacity water is growing ever murkier beneath an opalescent, coconut-scented sheen.

All of this is to say, if it’s relaxation you seek, choose your pool carefully. Weekday visits are preferable. Look into a spa pool; access to turquoise tranquility often comes with the purchase of a treatment. Or pick a hotel that seems more interested in providing a restful experience than selling gallons of premixed piña coladas. Or reconsider the public pool. You may discover that sharing the water with toddlers is a lot more fun than sharing it with adults behaving like toddlers. —Courtney Bond