Ways to Enjoy the Water This Summer

Summer is the time when the hot weather makes most of us think of getting in the water. You might swim in the ocean, take a dip in the pool, or take up more adventurous activities like kayaking or canoeing.

If you are really adventurous, you may want to take up surfing. This is a sport that requires a lot of fitness, so you may want to start with The Surf Girl Guide to Surf Fitness. This book gives you plenty of exercises to achieve peak surf fitness. If you want to investigate some of the history and traditions of surfing, you can check out The Way of the Surfer. The movie Step Into Liquid will inspire you with all kinds of surfers riding the waves in all sorts of environments, from the high waves of Hawaii to the shallow waves of the Gulf Coast, to sand surfing in Vietnam.

If you’re not quite that adventurous, but still yearn for the open sea, you may want to paddle a kayak on the ocean. The Art of Kayaking will tell you how to handle waves and take on the tides in a kayak, and how to plan for a long or short trip in the ocean.

If you don’t want to get out into the open ocean to do surfing or kayaking, you may want to explore the possibility of paddling on ponds and lakes. You can find where to go to do some easy paddling in Quiet Water Mid-Atlantic. This will tell you about all the best places for gentle canoeing or kayaking in New Jersey and other nearby states.

Or maybe you just want to stick to the pool in the summer, but you want to learn some new strokes. In that case, you might want to check out The Swimming Drill Book, which has instructions on how to do a lot of different swimming strokes, such as the backstroke, the butterfly, freestyle, and many others.

Or maybe you are not too keen to get into the water at all, but just want to sit on the beach and watch the waves. If you’re someone like that, you might want to dive into some beach reading. When you think of beach reading, you probably think of some popular authors like Elin Hilderbrand, Debbie Macomber and Dorothea Benton Frank. But what if your beach reading was a book about the beach? If you want to know more about the beach you’re lying on, you might try reading  Atlantic Coast Beaches: A Guide to Ripples, Dunes, and Other Natural Features of the Seashore.  Instead of just being a book to read on the beach, this book tells you how to “read” the beach. This book will help you identify the different types of animals that inhabit the beach, find out interesting facts about the beach’s history, and learn something about the creatures that make the different shells you find on the beach.

You’ll probably find more than one way to enjoy the water this summer, so have fun exploring. But whatever it turns out to be, remember you can find lots of resources for pursuing any of your water-related activities at the Mercer County Library System.

- by Michael, West Windsor Branch