Goblin Valley State Park and Other Dreamscapes

Spontaneous weekend getaways are often my favorite trips because they aren’t weighed down in planning and forethought. It’s just, “Hey, the housework is caught up, the weather’s nice, and it won’t stay that way for long… Let’s load up the car and go camping someplace unique, someplace interesting, someplace we haven’t seen before.” Then you just go and hope for the best.

Last weekend, that’s what I did. I’d never visited Goblin Valley State Park, so I decided that this little trip would be to fix that problem. Since I don’t have much family in Salt Lake City, it takes a while to find someone who’s willing to take care of the dog and it’s a little pricey to bring Fido to the kennel. So, I decided to bring my dog, Cookie, along. She doesn’t get out of the city very often, so I tend to think that some of the best times for her are our little trips into the wilderness.

It’s a short three and a half hour drive from Salt Lake City to Goblin Valley State Park, but in that distance, the landscape couldn’t change more dramatically. The high Wasatch Mountains surrounding urban sprawl gives way to mesas, buttes, and red "varnished" cliffs in distant, remote desert. After a short drive over the mountains on Highway 6, comes Helper and then Price. In this vicinity, things begin to change QUICKLY. There is definitely a reason some people refer to Price as the “Gateway to the American Southwest.”

Before we arrived at Goblin Valley, I imagined a tiny “garden” of strange rock formations. I couldn’t have been more wrong (except for the idea about the rock formations). As I pulled up to the overlook, I was amazed that the vista appearing before me sprawled over what appeared to be several miles. I thought to myself, "Here is another example of the 'weird and wonderful' that makes Utah such a special place." Here is a place nature has made over eons that the most vivid and wild imagination would be unlikely to dream up. My kids were gawking at it; they were captivated in a way I haven’t seen before. So the kids, Cookie, and I walked to a trailhead and started to make our way into the bizarre valley of goblins or smurfs or rock mushrooms or various other ideas your imagination might concoct to describe this city or community of rock dreams like melting candles and Salvador Dali paintings.

The trail, which begins just past the parking lot and overlook picnic area intersects with numerous other trails heading in all directions. So once you make your way in, the choice is yours. Which of the thousands of other worldly features seem to be beckoning you? I have to believe that no matter which way a hiker goes, their imaginations are stricken with awe, confusion, wonder, and disbelief. I overheard a hiker saying, half-jokingly, “It’s a government conspiracy, this place.” One thing is certain about Goblin Valley State Park, it’s not subtle.

Camping amidst the landscape surrounding Goblin Valley was equally fascinating. The area’s remoteness means the stars have almost nothing to compete with: no light pollution, no air pollution, no noise pollution, no television (unless, of course, you’re traveling with one). When you look, they remind you of how brilliant they can be and you remember being a child with wide eyes again pondering place and existence.

The silhouettes of sandstone dunes surrounding our campsite beckoned a friend of mine and I to take a midnight stroll into the surreal desert. Cookie accompanied us as we walked along a path, up and up, higher and higher, into a narrow canyon until we reached the top when some sort of feline scurried from behind a bush. I saw a long, ringed tail and glowing eyes peering back at me and then quickly vanish.

After gazing over the canyon’s rim in the desert’s deafening silence for a difficult to determine amount of time, we ambled back to our tents. I tucked myself into my sleeping bag, enjoyed the cool, desert breeze blowing through the tent mesh, and staring into the universe until its peace ushered me to sleep.