Goblin Valley

Here are some of our leftover Goblin Valley pictures.  Because of the heat, we all set up our tents under the pavilion on the cement pad.  It worked great keeping our tents in the shade, but when you only have two of the four stakes keeping the tents from blowing away it gets a bit interesting.  The tents were a little contorted but none of them flew away!  However, I could build a sand pit with the amount of sand we had inside of our tent since we didn't have our rain fly on.  

The wind made it great to fly the stunt kite!  That thing was flying all over the place!

The best part about camping in Goblin Valley is that the kids can totally go climbing and exploring.  For the girls it wasn't a problem and I could see them scampering up buttes like it was no big deal.  At one point though I looked up and saw Kelton as high as the girls, and on the edge of a cliff.  I was a really inner turmoil moments trying to decided to trust them or become crazy mom and rush over to bring them down.  Ultimately I stood near their down climb to catch them if they fell, but they did great.  Next time Kelton went with Jeremy.

To escape the afternoon heat, and to give the kids a chance to nap, Mark took us on a backroad drive through the middle of nowhere.  Jeremy was loving it.  Dirt roads, a real paper map, and the hope that we could make our way back.  We stopped and saw some of the best pictographs I have ever seen.  Look how well those have been preserved.  

Then we drove just a short drive further to Dutchman Arch.  It was a great way to see some of the back areas of the San Rafael swell.  We didn't even have to walk to them.  Thanks Mark!

Since the kids had all been able to rest, I didn't feel as bad letting them stay up one more night to play in the hoodoos.  It was just so cool watching all those glowsticks running around like crazy.  I can't believe that we didn't have anyone fall, crash, or injure themselves since we were playing in the dark!  

The next morning I insisted that we go back to the hoodoos to get a picture since we'd only been there at night.  Along the way we lost Camille, Jake, Emma and my dad who had to drive back north.  But here are the rest of us.  

Family picture in all of our dirty, sandy, sunburned glory.  

I wanted the kids to get out as much energy as they could before our drive back to Colorado.  

The boys just hid in the shade, I get it.  

Look at these three rascals!

The girls played hide and seek with Jeremy.  Well, it's much harder with a smaller crew.  Jeremy finally just had to call the girls out because he couldn't find them.  I can't blame him!  Look at the area he was searching through!  

Even though it was hot and we lost some family along the way, it was such a fun camping trip.  I'm going to go as far as to say that we should do this again next year!