Manchester Iowa Whitewater Park
A few members of the Sioux Falls Whitewater Park made a trip to the new and biggest whitewater park in Iowa, Manchester Whitewater Park. Now this park is quite a drive from Sioux Falls but it was well worth the five hour trip.
Manchester Iowa is a small town of 5,179 people in Delaware County with big dreams. And these dreams became true for them this winter. Through the winter of 2014-2015 the city started work on removing a dangerous dam on the Maquoketa River. This dam was severely damaged from floods back in 2008. The city wanted to do something special other than just putting the normal rock arches when a dam is removed. So they came up with a plan to construct a great whitewater park after seeing the success of Charles City and Elkader’s whitewater parks. The original plan was to have 6 features at 18 inches. But as we found out in our visit they had 7 features and I didn’t bring a tape measure but I can guarantee some of those drops were over the 18 inch marker.
Now we went when the water was a little low for those advanced paddlers but we wanted to check out the new park and work on our skill building. When we first got to the park it was like a different world. People were walking the trails with family and friends. I have never seen so many people with huge smiles on their face other than Disney World! We first walked down the path that travels along the whole whitewater park. we were able to watch people and check out the 7 features Manchester had to offer from this path. The river was packed with kayakers, tubers, and swimmers. Now that we are super pumped to get in the water, we get our gear on and meet up with a great friend and supporter of the Sioux Falls Whitewater Park. She was a great asset to our adventure. She had experience on the course and the area so we were in great hands for the whole day. It was like having our own personal river guide for the day.
The first feature was steep and fast. It was a hot day so it was nice to get a good splash right off the bat. We played around with eddy turns and peel outs and headed to the second feature. The second feature was steep like the first one but not as swift. We also played around for a few minutes with the feature eager to hit them all right away we headed to the third feature. The third feature we spent most of our day at since it had a good entry into the wave and had a good distance between this feature and the next. We ended up staying on the third feature for about 45 minutes until we decided to hit the rest of the features and try it all over again. The fourth feature is more of a rock dam in my eyes, no decent wave to surf but fu
n to practice some boofing. We quickly moved the fifth wave. This one was steep and really fast. The fifth feature really got the blood pumping and was a nice wave for side surfing. We quickly ran feature six since this one looked similar to feature five and wanted to great rush of speeding down the wave and slamming into a wall of water. Now our pulse is really jumping so we continued to hit feature seven. All of our group had smiles from ear to ear and a lot of woohooing on those last three features. Getting out was easier as pie. Simply got out of our kayaks and walked up the windy sidewalk path and started our way to the beginning. We continued to go down and hit up the different feature throughout the day and a blast hanging out with paddlers, tubers and swimmers. Towards the end of the day we decided to try going down all six features just with our lifejackets. We had to get the full experience but didn’t feel the need to rent a tube at the local restaurant right at the park. So we jumped in at the first features and let the current take us. Surprising enough this was a blast, we actually ended up going down three times this way. The waves were save enough for us to go down the features feet first and head first. To me it felt like a slip and slide adults could enjoy.
We spent around 6 hours on the park watching hundreds of people tube, kayak, raft, stand up paddle board, ride blow up Shamus and turtles, and just going down with a life jacket. One event I will probably always remember are the middle aged men coming down the features in a tube smiling and screaming on their way down. I’m almost positive those older individuals had more fun than the kids!!It might be a five hour drive but it is 100% worth it. Great people use these features, everyone is friendly, and the local restaurants are top notch.
Check out Manchester Whitewater Park!
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