A Few Minutes of Summer at Balmorhea State Park, 5:59pm, 8-2-24

I spent summers in Midland as a kid. Dad would take us out here almost every other weekend. It seems to be a lot more popular now than it was. (Although a woman we spoke with in Marathon—a town just an hour and a half drive south—had no idea what we were talking about. So maybe it’s still a bit of a secret) The park sits in the high desert of West Texas on the edge of the Davis Mountains and consists of a camp ground, a few cottages for rent, and a massive outdoor pool fed by the San Solomon Springs. The pool accommodates summer swimmers as well as scuba divers (it’s over 25 feet deep in places, in fact most of the pool is too deep to stand in.) It’s full of fish and underwater plants and stays a constant temperature year round. I hadn’t been in over 25 years and this was the first time my wife and kids have been there. It was so good to be back.

Here’s about 6 minutes of sound from the far side of the pool recorded on my F6 with a pair of clippy mics in A/B stereo. Overall a very good day.