Okay, holy moly, yes, staying down at the pools was a GREAT idea.
I spent the six hours everyone else used to walk up two hours, play in the water for two hours and hike back two hours, with Pam, Adam, Michael and Sonia, playing cards and Botticelli. We moved a couple times, to stay in the shade.
We had a rotating swimmer, since there were five of us and enough cards for only four of us to play at a time. Once of us would go for a swim while the other four played a hand.
I had an unfortunate incident during the day when we were moving at one point. I had to poop, and I had to poop badly, no holding this one in. So, I pooped into my lunch bag (this was, fortunately, after lunch, so the bag was empty), and stuffed it into a plastic bag, then shoved that into another plastic bag, and THAT into a third plastic bag, and carried the whole thing out, down out of the side canyon. Ick. The groover is so much more pleasant.
Around 1:30, we went down to the Olympic Poool, and met up with Matt and Pat. We all lounged until about 2:15 or so when the rest of the crew started showing up. The water at the resting / meetup point was WONDERFUL. Perfectly cool temperature.
Kris commented when he met up with me that yes, the waterfall was nice, but the pools were no different than where I had stayed. I knew at that point I had made the right choice. I, and the Js, had six hours more of lounging around than the rest of the group. Lounging! YAY!
The group went back to the boats for another two hours of rowing down to Tuckup Canyon Beach. Kris, Andy and I were in Charly's boat again, but the day was a huge contrast to yesterday's ride. The conversations were fun and loud enough for me to hear.
