I get the feeling that Northern Californians especially love swimming holes because our beaches are so un-beachy. Take Ocean Beach in San Francisco, an expanse of intimidating waves and frigid water. Sometimes swept with fog and a punishing wind, the beach has no lifeguards and, instead, a sign that says: “Danger – Rip Currents. People Have Died Swimming and Wading Here.” Pescadero State Beach, which I went to as a kid, had similar warning signs (although that didn’t prevent my dad from wading alone into the breakers). The beach was a place to have salt, sand and a cold mist whipped through your hair — and maybe see a gray whale or an orca if you were lucky — but not so much a place for tanning and swimming.

For that, people head inland, where they can float along the American River in an inner tube, a beer nestled in its cup holder, or wade in the Tuolumne in Yosemite, spreading their towels on boulders. (I have fond memories of getting myself good and cold in the water there, and then lying on various hot rocks, imagining I was a Western fence lizard.)