Taking time to relax and enjoy the nice weather can be so refreshing, and what better way to do that than by sitting out at a pool?! Micky Thornton of Tennessee is a man who had always dreamed of a backyard pool throughout his childhood, so he was determined to make this dream a reality when he became an adult. But, he decided to take it a step further because he wasn’t going to just settle for any pool!
“To start with, I probably had the idea when I was 9 or 10 years old,” Thornton said. “I wanted [the pool] large in the deep end but large and deep enough you could swim around it and not feel like you are trapped in a little box.” This project started back in 1993 when Thornton started building what seemed to resemble more of an attraction at a water park than a backyard pool! This massive pool is made up of 320 yards of gunite (a cement-sand mixture used in lining tunnels and structural repairs), 40,000 pounds of steel rebar, rock-lined waterfalls, sprayers, and an about a half a million gallons of water!
And, although the pool was initially just intended for his family to use, Thornton’s massive creation has attracted a lot of attention from his friends and neighbors. The Thornton family has now decided to let others in on the fun, so they’ve allowed close friends and neighbors to use the pool free of charge. But, people kept coming to Thornton and offering to pay him to use his pool. So eventually, he decided to put a fixed donation price for others to use his backyard and people from all over have been coming to see it! Now, people can rent the pool for events like birthday parties, family reunions, weddings, and baptisms. “Of the different churches, there have been over 400 people baptized in the pool,” Thornton said. “Which is something I think is kind of neat.”
Check out the video below to see this incredible pool for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k04k4xOp6ZY
[Source/Simple Most]
Share this story with your friends who have pools and see what they think about Thornton’s crazy backyard!
