Come On In, The Water's Fine!

By NANCY GIBBS

Alexander the Great, while laying siege to ancient cities, is said to have filled 30 trenches with snow and covered them with branches in order to provide a refreshing oasis for his ladies. No less resourceful was Emperor Nero, who reputedly dispatched runners up into the mountains to fetch ice, which he flavored with fruits and honey to make the original snow cone. And it is likely that Marco Polo, during his travels in the Far East, discovered sherbet.

For even the most sweet-tempered soul, August is a test of patience and ingenuity, when office workers lunch by a fountain and hope for a strong wind. Shoppers browse through Chicago's Hammacher Schlemmer, lured by inflatable water shoes (pontoons for the feet), or a solar-powered ventilated golf cap, or, for sun worshipers who don't know any better, a sun-tracking beach chair that rotates 360 degrees for maximum exposure. For those who prefer refrigeration to recreation, swank, Dallas-based Neiman Marcus is prepared to cater a private picnic for customers in its fur vault, which is kept at a constant 40 degrees F.

Above all, people need to be watered in August, and any entrepreneur with a splashy way to make waves should have no trouble staying afloat. Who, for example, could resist the Dive-In Movies at Raging Waters park in San Dimas, Calif.? There, up to 500 moviegoers can drift through feature films while floating in inner tubes around an 81-ft. by 193-ft. pool. High-powered fans underwater create gently rolling waves, which may not suffice to soothe the bathers as they watch, typically, Jaws, Creature from the Black Lagoon (this in 3-D) or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Movies are free after patrons pay a $14.95 general-admission fee, $9.50 after 5 p.m. "This is the prototypical Southern California experience," says park spokesman Stan Friedman. "It combines the beach, swimming and Hollywood all in one place."

Down South, the heirs of the soap-obsessed Walt Disney have raised bathing to an art form. In Florida, Walt Disney World has just opened Typhoon Lagoon, the last splash in water theme parks. Visitors can paddle in a wave pool the size of 2 1/2 football fields, which sports computer-controlled water chambers that empty out in a torrent of 4-ft. waves simulating ocean surf. High above on Mount May Day teeters a replica of a wrecked fishing boat that periodically spouts a spray of water. In keeping with the typhoon motif, one artfully ramshackle building has a motorboat impaled on the roof.

California's Disneyland has just opened Splash Mountain, which may be the most high-tech, high-thrill, fastest, longest, tallest log-flume ride in the world. Two thousand passengers an hour can shriek through the swirling path down the watery mountain, at speeds of up to 40 m.p.h. Serenading them along the way are Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Bear and other characters from Disney's 1946 partly animated film Song of the South. Since Splash Mountain opened July 18, visitors have typically waited an hour and a half for the 10-min. ride.

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.

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles, with other bureaus