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A 6-ft. wave was once hard to find in the middle of Wisconsin -- but not anymore. The new Big Kahuna Wave Pool is luring scorched Midwesterners to Noah's Ark Water Park, where 600-h.p. air compressors send waves rolling from one end of the 600-ft. pool to the other. The waves are kept to a modest 3 ft. during the busiest hours of the day, but visitors who arrive early enough after the 9 a.m. opening can play in the giants.
When it comes to getting and staying wet, there are still, of course, plenty of purists who have no use for oversize whirlpool baths and plastic logs. "You never swam till ya swam in a quarry," declares Marilyn Woodruff, owner for the past 22 years of Clearwater Quarry near Toledo. Abandoned as a limestone mine around the turn of the century, Clearwater soaks almost two acres, roughly 30 ft. deep. At nearby Salisbury Quarry, 65 ft. at its deepest, half the swimmers are scuba divers. They come to rummage around the sunken hulks -- eight fishing trawlers, as well as buses and vans.
When it comes to riding the waves, surfboards may forever be the favorite vehicle in Malibu, but Arizonans prefer inner tubes. The car or truck tubes rent for $6.25 a day at the Salt River recreation area outside Phoenix. Somewhat more economically, up at the Heady-Ashburn cattle ranch in Arizona's Sonoran Desert, Sonny and Nancy McCuistion and their two hired hands head for the cow troughs. "The cows are a little surprised at first, but they're gentle," says Nancy. "Of course when you get out, it feels funny riding back in wet Levi's."
It is even possible to be wet and hip at the same time. In Manhattan's East Village, best explored with a bodyguard, the trendies dine at Cave Canem, a converted Turkish bathhouse serving a Roman feast, where the dance floor abuts a 7-ft. by 9-ft. pool. Summer Tuesdays and Thursdays are swimming nights. Says Owner Hayne Suthon, as she wrings out her hair in a towel: "It's the only place you can go swimming in New York without cement shoes and garbage bags." And the wildlife is spectacular.