Canyonlands. Wow. I’m running out of ways to describe yet more amazing scenery. The view stretches for miles and miles and miles – from the overlook on the end of the mesa above the confluence of the Green River and the Colorado River. Each geological layer is clearly visible, and a 100 mile 4WD track called white rim trail runs all the way around the park – it looks tempting – the van can handle a lot of off road stuff, but we’ve not got the 3 days it would take, and we probably would get stuck. We’re not set up for real off roading. A trip to save for the bucket list.
Starting to feel a little jaded by endless expanses of rock and huge views, we didn’t spend long in the park … and with a fair bit of distance to go to the next stop, we headed off early afternoon. After a long drive around the top of the Canyonlands, we turned off the desolate, empty highway to Goblin Sate Park just in time to avoid a monster thunderstorm. Pulled over on the side of the road, we watched the lightning sizzling into the ground no more than a mile away.
Goblin Valley; hat a crazy place. Day after day we’re coming across rock and sand formations like nothing we’ve ever seen before – this place is definitely the most bizarre yet. The soft sandstone has eroded into lumps, pillars and hoodoos that really do look like goblins. When the rain stopped, we walked a mile and a half from camp along a muddy ravine to the Goblin Valley, where we spent a couple of hours exploring the weird landscape.
This campground has a little cabin for each site – protection from both sun and rain. More RVs than tents, which meant people with noisy generators, including our neighbours who spent the evening watching a movie with theirs running until late in the night. Still a pretty awesome site, surrounded by crumbling sandstone cliffs and buttresses, a bit like being in a huge inside-out gothic cathedral.
Road and Ocean 