Our first stop was Goblin Valley State Park. We had never heard of the park but several people we met on our travels said “you have to see it to believe it” – so we went! Not only did we see it but we camped in Goblin Valley among the goblins! When you first see the valley you think you have been transported to Mars – it is like nothing we have ever seen before. Miles and miles of red stone “characters” nestled in a valley in the middle of the desert and sculpted by 1,000’s of years of erosion. They seem to come alive with your imagination and just like the clouds you can see all sorts of characters and likenesses in the Goblins! It was fun to come up with our own ideas of what the goblins looked like since none of them had been previously named like you so often find in the national parks. We camped in the park campground among the Goblins in the middle of the desert. It was delightfully quiet ( the goblins were sleeping) and far from city lights so the stars were amazing!
Our next stop was Moab – base camp to see Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. It is incredible to see the power of water and wind – changing the landscape over millions of years sculpting huge canyons and arches. It’s so much easier to see the changes to the earth when there is so little vegetation to obstruct your view! An added bonus was a hike to see some dinosaur prints of an Alasaurus ( a three toed meat eating dinosaur that walked on it’s hind legs) and LOTS of petroglyphs and we even saw a really cool old cowboy camp tucked under an overhang in the rocks in Canyonlands National Park!
Landscape Arch - the 3rd largest in the world
Delicate Arch - the icon for Utah's canyon country
It's a "Grand Canyon" under construction in Canyonlands!
Dinosaur foot prints!
Next stop was in the very south part of Utah near the four corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. There are lots more Pueblo ruins in SE Utah. We hiked to a few cliff dwellings and Pueblo towers that were off the beatin’ path –what a treat to be the only ones there!
We went to Natural Bridges National Monument where 3 of the largest bridges in the world have been carved out by a river running through a canyon. We learned that the difference between a bridge and an arch is a bridge is carved out by flowing water from a stream or river and an arch is carved by wind and rain and ice. We hiked down to the bottom of the canyon to see one of the bridges up close – it was huge… much larger than it looked from the rim of the canyon!
We also went to Monument Valley where the classic old western movies were filmed… massive red buttes all over the valley rising 1,000’s of feet above the valley floor. Some of the more recent movies filmed there are Back to the Future III and Mission Impossible III and there are the classic films from the 40’s and 50’s like Stagecoach that were filmed there too .
Scooter finally got her chance to do some off roading ( it’s a wildly popular past time out in this part of the country). We drove on the Moki Dugway – we found out that a “Dugway” came from pioneer days when a wagon trail was dug out of a very steep cliff through the mountains. Scooter had no problem traversing the Dugway and the view of Monument Valley from the top was beautiful! We did have to spend the afternoon cleaning the dust out of her – it got into everything even though we had the windows closed! We camped at a government campground by the San Juan River and had a view of a cliff with lots of petroglyphs on it - quite an unusual view at a campground!
Our last stop was the Four Corners Monument. It’s the exact spot where the corners of Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet. So we stood in four states all at once and Molly did too! Seeing the four corners was on Molly’s “bucket list” so we just had to take her there!
We've been on the road almost 2 months now and the time has flown by ...next stops on our journey are Mesa Verde National Park ( can’t wait to see the really big cliff dwellings there), Durango/Silverton and the San Juan Scenic Skyway drive, Pagosa Springs and Great Sand Dunes National Park!
