Little Grand Canyon

Ryan's brother, Sam, flew out to visit us from Denver over his spring break. Sam is a freshman in high school and we appreciated him being willing to spend time with old fogies like us. Ryan took him a number of places including up the Arch, to Forest Park, and on the Budweiser factory tour (where he enjoyed seeing the Clydesdales.) On Tuesday, we drove several hours down to the "Little Grand Canyon" in southern Illinois.

I did the trail with Ryan once, about three years ago. The tricky thing about the trail is that the trail down is actually the waterfall itself, as is the trail up. It makes for very slippery (and dangerous, in my opinion) hiking. I slipped and fell a couple times the last time we went and was worried that if I were to fall and break my tailbone, there's no quick way out of there to get help because of the treacherous nature of the trail. Ryan talked me into it because there were three of us along.

Although there wasn't a lot of wildlife or vegetation out yet, the temperature was about 65 and it was sunny, which made for very pleasant hiking weather. In another month, the weather will be super-muggy and hiking is a lot more uncomfortable.

Illinois is an incredibly flat state, so to see this kind of view is highly unusual!






When we got to the bottom of the canyon, we discovered our trail was underwater! We simply took the opportunity to do a little "off-roading", finding our own trail over branches and through some pretty muddy areas.