Anything from the puddle outside your house to the Pacific Ocean.
Oceans, seas, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks, anything you want to name.
For me, it would either be Lake Superior. For it’s vastness and it’s chillyness
or
The Bay of Fundy. It’s just so bizarre.
Honorable mention to Isa lake. This is a very small lake (basically a pond), but it lies right on the Continental Divide so that run off from this lake leads to both Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
It only gets a name because of this unique feature.
This’ll probably sound predictable given my location, but Shag Harbour. Part of it may be because I went to school in the community, and we’d go on field trips along the beaches near the school. But there’s something about it that I love, even when the waters are choppy (although since they built a fish farm there, it’s lost some of it’s appeal). You can never get an unbroken view of the horizon from the shore, there’s always islands in the way, so it feels really closed in. And I know a good place to get an awesome view of the sunset.
Honourable mention goes to Clyde River, which agains brings back fond childhood memories. It’s a fairly wide river, so the waters are always pretty calm. I’ve been up there hunting and fishing with my dad since I was a kid. It’s absolutely gorgeous in the fall when the leaves turn, and there’s several small off-shoots where we’ve gone fishing before, one of which runs right past one of Dad’s friend’s hunting camps where I spent a lot of time when I was little.
Puget Sound. I was born in a hospital that overlooked Commencement Bay. 48½ years later and it still give me chills. One of my favorite spots is located in Northeast Tacoma. Look one way and you have a majestic view of Puget Sound. Turn around and you can see Mt. Rainier from sea level to the very top.
The Atlantic ocean, specifically around rocky beaches on the New England coast. I just love seeing all the critters that live there. And the critters you folks out west have, just don’t seem as good.
OtakuLoki, whatever you need to take away from the fact that the water is freezing year round
A tie. Monterey Bay California for the otters and whales and Wailea Beach, Maui for having the most beautiful view and clearest, warmest water I’ve ever swam (swum?) in.
My favorites are the smaller rivers and streams in the Texas Hill Country. I have many favorites.
The water is generally from a spring and is clear and cold. Sometimes it can be a 105 degree day and the water will be almost too cold to get into! The streams frequently have a green tint from the alge that grows on the rocks. Cypress grow right up to the waters edge adding to the greenish tint. Sometimes you can find a travertine pool where the water is clear like glass for eight or ten feet or more.
The stream beds are usually sandstone and frequently as smooth and flat as a roadway. The sides of the streambeds can be littered with smooth round stones from pebble size to boulder size, all having been ground smooth by the water and then bleached white by the sun. Where the river edges are cliff-like, you can see drippy moss and fern covered areas where the water is leaking out between rock layers. If it’s deep, you can climb the cliffs and jump off. In the larger rivers there can be sandbars made of smooth rocks. If the sandbars are big or long, they make great “tubing” runs and can be very exciting.
We have spent hours building dams and pools for our basking pleasure, just to tear them up and start over again, and countless more hours drifting down the slow moving rivers in tubes doing nothing more than having your toes nibbled by curious fish and tipping ourselves over occasionally to cool off.
In a few places, enterprising people have thrown picnic tables in the river as a signal that beer and tacos can be had up the hill from that spot. And if you suspect a flash flood for any reason, move far away from the river very quickly and don’t look back until you are on very high ground.
Lake Superior. No other body of water is quite so clean and clear; I’ve been out in boats where you can see to the bottom, thirty feet below. The lake is tricky, too, and you have to watch out that it doesn’t get the best of you. I talke to it when I’m out in my Kayak. Sometimes it answers.