Goblin Valley 2009

Stephen took a Botany class during the summer and needed to collect 50 different plants to turn in at the end of the semester. But, these plants couldn't be just any ole' plants that you can find off the side of the road or in your flower garden. For the first couple of days we went on hikes up Hobble Creek and Rock Canyon. I think I found 40 of the 50. We'll let Stephen think he found all of them though. He did most of the work after finding them anyway.
But, Stephen wanted to go down to Goblin to see if we could get a cactus to turn in for his class. So, we packed up the Yukon and headed down to the unknown.
I took a nap most of the way, but when I finally woke up all I saw was....NOTHING and sage brush. No trees for shelter or shade. Nothing was out there. I was scared. I thought we were going to die of a heat stroke from being in the sun all day. Because we were going to be down there for 3 days!
As it turned out we found a very nice camping area that had trees and secluded from other campers. The dogs loved being able to run wild.





I don't know about any of you but Goblin Valley is CRAZY, extremely hot and quite windy at our campsite. I had Stephen pull the Yukon closer to the campfire so that it wasn't so windy.


The day after we got to Goblin Valley we went to the actual park where all the Goblins are. Even at 8:30 in the morning it was still extremely hot. We made sure that we all had plenty of water and not over doing it. Here are a couple of pictures of us with the dogs and a couple of the goblins. Let see if you can guess what they are:






The Duck



The Sorting Hat from Harry Potter

We had a ton of fun while we were down there. I think next time we go down to Goblin Valley we will go a little bit earlier in the year.