June 20th “the Narrows”

June 20th “the Narrows”

Oh, the narrows. I have been waiting for this day. The narrows is a hiking trail that is up the (very ice cold) Virgin River. The river is small and the walls that are around it are very high and made of sandstone. It is a very cool hike to go one. We woke up this morning and rented these water shoes with neoprene socks to keep your feet warm. We started the hike a little later than we wanted, but we reached the river at the beginning of the hottest part of the day. The cold water felt so good. I thought I was going to die trying to walk up stream but it was actually not bad. We walked three-four hours up stream. The water isn’t too high because it is a dry season for them but it did get up to my shoulders at one point-the cold totally takes your breath away. The river has huge rocks in it, so the whole time your have to check your step and you slip often. We had these wooden walking sticks that help you keep your balance and it saved me several times from falling in. Aaron got some cool pictures of us in the river, although we were both nervous about his camera. People would walk by and say “do you want us to take your picture?” Aaron would very politely say “no thank you.” Little do they know that I don’t like even touching Aaron’s camera in fear of doing something to it. One our way back down river, I was constantly fighting the currant so that I wouldn’t get tripped up. I actually preferred going up stream because you don’t get tripped up as easily. But I could tell that my legs were going to be sore from this journey. Toward the end, my body was screaming to stop. When we got back to civilization, we had on wet clothes, huge water logged shoes and looked like someone had beat us up. We were exhausted!! We missed the hours for the public showers in town so we had to go without tonight. This is the first day that we haven’t been able to take a shower. Hopefully we will tomorrow.