Camelbeach

And the award for first outdoor water park of 2010 for the Tarpley family goes to...Camelbeach in the Poconos.

It's one of the few water parks in the tri-state area that we'd never been to, so we decided to honor it with our presence this year. Like Mountain Creek in NJ, it's a ski resort in winter, converted to a water park in summer.

It was just under a 2-hour drive from Manhattan, and we arrived just as the gates opened at 11. There were no lines when we got there, so we spent the first 30 minutes rushing from the bottom of waterslides back to the top in mad glee, trying to squeeze in as many rides as we could before the lines came. But amazingly, they never really did. Definitely a change from overcrowded places like Splish Splash on LI.

Summer is here, life is good, and there's nothing in the whole world like a water park.