Capitol Reef & Goblin Valley

A couple of weeks ago we took the kids to Capitol Reef and Goblin Valley. Primitive camping sounded hard, so we got a cheap hotel instead. The highlight of the trip for Melia was discovering the beds in the hotel were close enough to jump from one to the other. But the hiking was ok too.

We saw some cool petroglyphs on the way out to Hickman Bridge. Made me wonder who got the job of climbing up there to etch them into the canyon wall.

Hickman Bridge is a little hike out to a natural bridge. It was pretty obvious how the bridge got there as we hiked closer. It was a really calm day everywhere else, but right around the bridge was pretty windy.

We had fun sitting under the bridge and yelling to hear the echo.

Later that day we hiked through Grand Wash. And yes, it was grand. The way the walls have been eroded left some cool pockets to climb in and have a little rest.

The next day we went to Goblin Valley. Within the park, The Valley of the Goblins is huge and you can climb anywhere you want. We spent a few hours climbing around the "goblins" and playing hide and seek.

After lunch we hiked part of the way into Little Wild Horse Canyon outside of Goblin Valley. We probably should have done this first because we were too tired to go that far in. It's a slot canyon, but some rocks had fallen and blocked the trail in a few spots that were a little tricky to climb over. We stopped when we got behind a group of people that were having a hard time getting over a few boulders blocking one of the narrowest spots. This is definitely somewhere we need to go back and hike again, though.

We were all tired and needed to get back home anyway.