4th of July in Iowa - Part 2

I love my home town. It’s Storm Lake, Iowa, population about 10,000 and it’s a place dear to my heart. Within recent years, there have been numerous changes to the town. Some group made the decision to tear down our beloved public swimming pool (where I would guess the admission price to be something like $3.00 per person) as well as other buildings and in their places construct a resort-style hotel, restaurant, conference center, indoor and outdoor pool / water park. The complex is now known as King's Point Resort. As a consequence, the admission to their water park ranges from $14.00 pp for either the indoor or outdoor facility to something like $22.00 pp for both parks. I noticed on their website that they even charge admission of $5.00 for people who do not wish to swim!

We decided to pass up that wallet-sucking experience and head to the lovely little town of Alta (5 miles away) to use their public pool. Lola was excited the pool in Alta has diving boards. She didn’t know how to dive, but within a couple hours she learned to dive off the side of the pool and then on to the brave move of diving off the boards!!


While swimming there three days in a row, Lola made a new friend named Izzy. Izzy (short for Isabel) is a year younger and lives just a couple blocks from the pool. We have her address so we can keep in touch, and hopefully we’ll have a chance to see her when we make a visit back to Iowa for the Christmas holiday!

On the morning we left Storm Lake to head back to the Minneapolis airport we stopped at my old elementary school, which I had heard was going to be torn down soon. I just had to take some photos of the poor old building before its demise. There are many memories from that school, and I'm a little saddened about the plans to raze it.





How things change! Storm Lake, at one time, had five public elementary schools. During the time I was in middle or high school, Hayes Elementary outside of town was closed. Now the remaining four - North, South, East and West, have all been replaced by a brand-new elementary school on the west edge of town, large enough to accomodate all. I remember the 1/2 day track meet that took place every spring, with participants from the third through the sixth grades. All five of the elementary schools would compete against one another in various events at the high school track. That is one of the fondest memories of my early school days.