Grand "Edventure" Hurricane Canal/Virgin River

Kennis, Gaige, Paul and I went on an exploration of the Virgin River area below Virgin yesterday. We had to start early because we needed to be back for yet another Blue and Gold Banquet.  We started at Falls Park, which was beautiful with very high water, and it was kind of cold.  We checked out the old bridge and dropped rocks off seeing a lot of nice places to play in the water when it gets a bit warmer.  Then we drove back toward Hurricane and took several dirt roads to overlook the river in different spots.  At one place we found a dam that we didn't even know was there.  They were just letting out a little bit a water below there, so suddenly the river became much tamer than at Falls Park. After a bit we parked and walked down about a very rough dirt road for a mile or so to get down to the river.  We explored and found an old Jeep, lots of fossils, a couple of old roads, a newly blasted road, a cave, and the remnants of the old Hurricane and LaVerkin canal/irrigation systems. We built a little fire in one of the old canals and had lunch and then hiked on a road and then went up and hiked a chunk of the Hurricane canal trail including crawling through a tunnel where it went underground for a ways.  We did about 5 miles in all and sung our way out the steepest part on to - "99 bottles of pop on the wall"- clear down to 67 bottles.  We had to whisper the last several verses when it got too hard to breathe.  Lots of fossils and pretty rocks were gathered along the road and brought home for mementos of the day. Since the Borrowmans are trying to reduce sugar intake right now we stopped for pretzels instead of ice cream.  The kids did great. We pretty much wore Gaige out by the end.  (He took a little nap on the way to get pretzels.)  It warmed up later in the day and we even waded the river once to check out a cave.  The consensus was that we should come back when it gets warmer and play in the water!  

Falls Park and looking over the edge

We arrive at the river

Silly faces, lunch, a fossil rock, many colors and rock topping

Old Hurricane Canal trail tunnel and scary bridge crossing

More trail, a rock construction, crossing an old dam to get to a big cave

Climbing out, looking back down to where we were, snaky root and a snaky pretzel, heading home