After posing with the moose we were off to the nearby...
Quechee Gorge! Here oma and the grand children are looking out over the gorge, our 'Little Grand Canyon' in Vermont.
It is so nice to have oma around and hear stories about her youth. They would go swimming every morning, walking to the swimming pool (which was just river water redirected from the river) so they could learn to swim. They would have to walk there really early in the morning before school even started and after swimming they would walk to school.
Of course, boys and girls couldn't swim together, so first the boys would swim (6am to 6:30am) and then the girls were allowed to swim. Oma's brother Niek wasn't much of a fan of swimming. He would skip the whole water part, just wetting his swimming pants under the faucet to pretend that he had been swimming after all.
Not that she actually got lessons, she said that she mostly remembers hanging from the side, since her feet couldn't reach the bottom yet, not even in the shallow part of the pool.
Later on she actually got lessons.
When she was able to swim, a new pool opened in town. This was an posh pool that their family wouldn't have been able to afford, apart from them having special deals for families. She said the only reason they could swim there was that they had so many kids, so their family pass was affordable to them.
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