My daughter and I went to Eau Claire Dells County Park one sunny day this past summer and brought our boogie board. That's simply a type of adult belly-board that came into popularity on the West Coast used as a body surf-board -- too small to stand on, but just right for boogie boarding (short for body-surfing with a belly board). We use them for paddling far out into fresh water lakes to snorkel here in northern Wisconsin. When she was seven and eight-years old she would swim with me far out into the middle of some of the small lakes up here, no fins, no belly-board, just for the sake of enjoying the water. Since then we've given ourselves over to a much easier way to do it. I even have a 10 foot paddle board that we sometimes paddle out and use as a sort of raft as we snorkel, as well as just to sunbathe on.
This was our first time at Eau Claire Falls and we just decided to bring the boogie board along. Sorry for the quality of the You Tube recording below, but there you can see my daughter's first whitewater boogie board run. Until then, she had no idea how fun these little boards could be on a river. My run was too ugly to watch (maybe some other time), but her's was good. In her previous run, she had slid off of her board and lost it downstream (I had to fetch it). But her second run was a keeper. I was just amazed after watching my flub that she agreed to do it. Enjoy.
