Today the boys and I went for a drive up Price Canyon to finally check out the old tunnel under the highway that we first noticed a couple of months ago. We arrived, armed with headlamps and a geocache container, and headed into the darkness. The tunnel is pretty featureless right up until the end, though there were some mineral formations on the ceiling from water seeping through the cracks. There were also several swallows’ nests closer to the tunnel opening, but none were very far in. It didn’t take us long to reach the end of the tunnel, and there we found a mound of dirt and a corrugated metal pipe through which warm air was entering the tunnel. I could see daylight through the tunnel, so I assumed that we’d passed under to the other side of Highway 6. I placed the geocache there under the pipe, then we exited the tunnel and crossed the highway above-ground to find the pipe. It turns out that the pipe is for drainage from the reclaimed area near the Castle Gate Mine #1 portal. I got a GPS reading there and determined that the tunnel was about 285 feet in length. I used that waypoint for the geocache listing–I’m sure there will be a lot of DNFs (did not find) before somebody figures out that it’s underground. >:)
After leaving the tunnel area, we drove up to Price Canyon Recreation Area and had a picnic. While we ate lunch, it sprinkled a little. We were shaded from it under a large Ponderosa pine, and by the time we were finished eating, the rain had subsided. We hiked up the hiking trail for a while, and the kids stopped a couple of times to climb the boulders along the trail. We didn’t really set out to do much hiking (we didn’t even bring water with us–it was left in the truck), so we turned back after about half a mile. It was a short but pleasant outing with the kids, and it left them wanting to go back this fall to do some more hiking when the fall leaves have changed color.