Were going to be passing through and would love to stop with the grandkids and visit for a hour or so. How accessible is the water to cool off?

You can enter the day use area of the park then take a short and beautiful walk to the beach.

There's plenty of accessible areas to go off the river, if you travel up the 199 before you ge to the river, there's a couple places you can drive down and park right by the river. They're not maintained roads and since it's the each of the river, it'll be a rocky/bumpy drive down, but my wife and I did it 2 years ago in a Ford Fiesta lol. Well worth doing.

Not very accessible if you follow the trail

Its family friendly river with a cute beach area at Jedediah Smith Park..

Very accessible