After Yanary decided to return to
her mother, we decided that we needed to get away for a weekend, and
what else would our family do other than go camping?
We packed up our bags (well, Karen did) and off we trundled to
Hengelhoef, a recreation area in the Eastern part of Belgium (a little
more than an hour away). We had been planning on going to park
for a while, as it has an indoor, subtropical swimming pool that we had
been dying to try.
We wound up spending the entire day at the pool and had a great
time! Here a few of the slides are visible - there are also
a few more with lots of twists and turns, as well as a pretty big
wading area for little kids (John and Lydia bought a little blowup boat
that they were allowed to bring into the pool which they pulled around
in the wading area all day!). Every hour they would turn on a
wave machine and send big waves through the deep part of the pool
(visible here behind the red-and-white floating line). Finally,
there was a "wild water ride", reserved for ages 13 and up, which Karen
and I tried and loved - it was basically a very fast moving river of
water, complete with rapids and deep pools, which would turn you upside
down, dunk you into the water, etc etc - they were right to restrict
the ages on it, and boy was it fun. We each went on it several
times and would have done it more if we didn't have to leave one of us
behind watching the kids!
