Johnson Shut-ins & Elephant Rock

A couple weeks ago we, along with my sister & her family, visited Johnson Shut-ins State Park. We had gone a few years ago, just before it was destroyed by a dam breakage. We had the best time then, and had planned to go back every year, but unfortunately it took over 3 years to clean it back up after the dam broke.

It finally opened back up this year, and it's better than ever! My sister & her family had never gone, so we planned to all go together. All the kids had an absolute BLAST....even Kalia. She didn't much care for the life vest, but got used to it. There are tons of slick rocks to climb over, and the river rushing over the rocks creates mini rock slides & rapids. At the end there is a really deep pool to swim in. The only bad thing about that really deep pool is at the beginning there is a strong current. So...easy to get to the pool...not so easy to get back.

We played for about 3 hours, then had a picnic lunch.

Afterwards, just to make sure the kiddos were completely worn out, we stopped at Elephant Rock state park (just up the road) to let them climb all over the huge boulders. I'm not sure who had more fun....the big kids (Dan & James) or the little kids!

The kids were definitely worn out when we decided to head for home. We stopped off all together & enjoyed dinner at McD's, then went our separate ways. We had a blast, and can't wait til our next group outing in August (heading to St. Louis).