Kanarraville Falls

Last Saturday morning, Mark was getting ready to go to work when his brother David called and invited us to go on a hike with him, his family and their brother Paul that afternoon at 12:30 to Kanarraville Falls. He immediately said yes on behalf of him and Madelyn, but took a while for me to commit. Finally I decided that Luke and I should go too. We had to hurry and get ready while Mark was at the clinic, and then we all drove over there.

Kanarraville is a little town about 12 miles south of Cedar City, and I always admire it as we drive past on the freeway. It's very scenic and has some pretty ranches. At the base of the mountain, there's a trail head for the hike.

 It was uphill virtually the entire way....and hot

 

 

You cross an icy cold creek about halfway there, which the kids loved

 

Paul and David

 

Finally (after lots of whining on Madelyn's part) we reached the part of the hike where you're supposed to walk up the creek into a slot canyon and climb up some waterfalls, like this:

 image here

(random people) image here

Uh, huh. Like I'm taking my kids up that.

So, we stopped and the others walked on. I would have liked to have seen the awesome scenery, but the creek was freezing cold, swift and slippery and I didn't feel like having one of my children drown that day. Plus Mark was on call and needed to get back into cell phone range. Instead, the munchkins just got wet and chucked rocks into the creek for a while, and then changed into the dry clothes I'd hauled up for them in my water/snack/sunscreen/diaper bag.

 

 

 

  

 

 Can you see the whiptail lizard Madelyn found?

 

Back down...

We had to park about five blocks away from those cars you see down there, which felt like about another five miles. Our car was right in front of a playground, and apparently we hadn't worn out the kids enough because then they wanted to play for another half hour.

 

They had these giant, 12-feet high metal slides that reminded me of the ones we used to have in our city park growing up. Ah, small towns...

 

Mark would like me to mention that because I was snapping this picture instead of catching Luke, he went zooming past me and did a face plant in the dirt as he came off the slide. Don't worry......he was fine.........

See?? 

 

So we got home dirty and exhausted at about 4:30 and I am STILL SORE and bug bitten. It was nice spending some time together as a family though. We might go back to that playground again--it was pretty dang sweet!