Where Goblins Abound

Okay, Goblin Valley State Park May not really be the spookiest place in Utah but it’s still a must see for anyone remotely close to the area. Located off of I-70 between Green River and Hanksville, Utah,  Goblin is a gem of a State Park. A lot of folks intent on bagging Utah’s share of National Parks overlook the Utah State Parks to their detriment. Goblin offers features not found in most National Parks and the Park offers hiking access that allows the visitor to get up and close with the Park’s namesake features that would be frowned upon in our national treasures (beware though, there is a study ongoing at Goblin measuring the impact of visitors that might in the future limit access so get there while you can!).

Goblin, as well as other Utah Parks, has also not outright banned the use of aerial drones though as of this May (2019) they are using a fee permit system to track drones flying within the Park boundaries. When I first went to Goblin several years ago I had been pleasantly surprised to find the Park allowed drone photography, so I give kudos to the Utah Parks administrators for taking a measured approach in instituting the permit policy rather than an outright ban. And yes, the Park Rangers do make sure you have the permit as you actually fly and film within the Park. 

I’m conscious of the fact that many folks don’t appreciate the sight and sound of a drone buzzing overhead as they sojourn with Nature so I kept my flying to very early morning and dusk unless there was no one around. I also made the effort to hike far enough into the Park to avoid most people before putting my DJI Mavic Pro into the air. Of course, if you’re a photographer, you know that very early morning and dusk, or the period known as golden hours, are the best time for pictures. The few people who actually saw my drone in the air were mostly more curious than bothered and I made a point of showing them the footage I was taking which elicited ooh’s and aah’s more than complaints.

Goblin offers a small campground with no electrical or other hookups though water is available at taps. Flush toilets and hot showers are available. Due to its small the size the campground fills up quickly and reservations for sites often need to be made months in advance.

At night the Park turns into a Stargazers delight as no towns are close by and the Park lighting is intentionally kept to a minimum. My wife’s camera doesn’t do night photography all that well but in the video below the one night sky shot at the end was taken at Goblin around 2 o’clock in the morning as the full moon was just rising over the eastern horizon (it took probably 30+ exposures playing with the manual settings to finally get this one image). 

Hiking at Goblin is almost infinite as you wander all the nooks and crannys. There are steps leading down from the parking lot that sits on a bluff overlooking the valley of Goblins. Once down you can make the hike as easy or as strenuous as you wish. As I mentioned above, the farther you hike the more what crowds there are diminish and before you know it you’re the only one out there which to me is pure nirvana. The surface can get a little slippery, if not downright muddy, if it rains so it behooves the savvy hiker to keep a weather eye out for clouds moving in.

There is also mountain biking allowed on the designated trails on the Mesa above the campground. The next canyon to the west of the Park boundary also allows unlimited mountain biking opportunities but you’ll likely share the trails with OHV’s. As with the Park, the farther you go the more serenity you’ll find. This would also be a great place for bike-packing and camping.

I’ve been to Goblin in September on my first trip and now in May so avoided the summer heat. Still, we had plenty of water on our hikes and bikes and given that it is in fact a desert climate I’d watch the time of day for my hikes if I was there in the summer.

I could go on and on about the wonders of Goblin Valley State Park but suffice it to say that it’s a must see. As glorious as the National Parks are in Utah, you’ll be sorry if you pass that special place by! Hope you enjoy my short video tour:

For more of Goblin here's video from my first trip as well as what its like to mountain bike in the area... If these three video snapshots cant entice you to get out to Goblin, I don't know what to do!

Dead Horse Point, truly a sight to see...

The area surrounding Moab is chock full of things to see and do. From biking and hiking to off road jeeping and rafting it would take more than a single lifetime to do it all. Since life is short, the trick is to simply do as much as you can while you're visiting this rock we call Earth.

Yukon takes in the view

I think I may have been out to Dead Horse Point many years ago when Moab was still a sleepy, yet to be discovered, backwater town. While the town has undergone its fair share of change in the intervening years the spectacular vistas remain as breathtaking as the first time I saw them. In my last blog I had promised a short video featuring Dead Horse Point so here it is. Much of Utah, for better or worse depending on your perspective, remains a cell service/Wi-Fi desert so finding a place to load video has been tough.

Dead Horse Point is a high mesa and features a narrow outcropping where cowboys used to trap wild horses. Apparently they had some horses corralled and left them behind for some unknown reason. The name, Dead Horse Point, tells the rest of the story. Today there is a nice Visitors Center, two very nice campgrounds, and a network of hiking and mountain biking trails that meander the canyon rims taking you from one jaw-dropping vista to the next. As is typical in many places, early morning and early evening are perhaps the best times to take in the grandeur but really any time of day is fine. The Desert changes with the shifting light and clouds so nothing ever seems to look the same twice.

I'm not going to lie, when we were there it was still getting downright cold at night and we had a fair amount of rain, sometimes heavy. Such is the price of admission to some wonderful places. If you're like me and believe a cold, wet day in nature beats a warm, dry day in the office you would have loved the conditions. Not so much my darling wife, but that's another story...

On the road again...

I couldn't wait to get back on the road again and here I am sitting in a campsite at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park overlooking a beautiful lake in actual sunshine and WARMTH.

My sweetheart and I, plus two overly furry Suburban Huskies, left Denver about a week ago heading west through yet another Spring snowstorm in the Colorado High Country. Will I ever get tired of driving Vail Pass through the blinding white stuff? What could make it more fun than that... Well,  just for grins, how about we throw in a 26 foot camping trailer behind the truck that we're taking out for the first time? Creeping down the west side of Vail Pass in a snowstorm is a great place to see if the trailer brakes really work.

Those that know me would have sworn I'd never be caught dead in an RV as I've always been more of a tent-sleep-on-the-ground kind of guy. I guess the die was cast when we got a Sylvan GO tent camper, albeit at my better half's insistence, when we went to Alaska a couple of years ago (see some of my prior blogs about the travails of THAT trip) to accomodate all the cold and rain that the Yukon and Alaska could muster (and it was a lot). So yeah, I've become a cream puff in my golden years.

Fortunately we slid through Vail unscathed and the good news? That white stuff wimped out and turned into just pounding rain that would follow us off and on for oh, the last seven days. We did survive Glenwood Canyon without the now required rockfall road closure and Grand Junction actually graced us with a teasing touch of blue skies.

Crossing the line into Utah we took the back road from Cisco down into Moab where we stocked up on supplies (is there a nicer City Market in the whole wide world than the one in Moab?) before heading to our stop for a couple of nights at Dead

Horse Point State Park. I'll be putting up some video in a couple of days, but if you've been, you know what a pretty place that is.

From Dead Horse our next stop was Goblin State Park which I think is one of the best places to see this side west of the... Atlantic. Yesterday was a travel day, thankfully in nicer weather, taking us through Capitol Reef National Park and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument before reaching our current abode. A special Thank You to our President and Congress for keeping the government open so we could get a glimpse of OUR national lands.

Weather forecast for Escalante Petrified Forest State Park is partly cloudy with temps in the 60's. I don't think we'll ever see the 70's this summer, but compared to Vail Pass in a blizzard, we'll take it!

Yukon admires the view
at Dead Horse S.P.

Congratulations

I'm sitting in the nosebleed section of the Magness Arena at D.U. awaiting the graduating class of Thunderridge High School class of 2019. Kudos to my final nephew Jakob for making it this far. As I'm sure the Valedictorians will gamely point out, a brave world awaits. It's been a long, long time since my High School graduation and it's both amazing and scary to contrast the world when I flipped my tassel all those years ago with today.

The words lockout and lockdown as well as the phrase 'shelter in place' were not yet in our vocabulary and yet just last week and just a short distance from Thunderridge there was another school shooting at the Highlands Ranch STEM school.

The world these new grads face is full of challenges my generation never faced. Are they ready? Time will tell. Will they live up to the aspiration to leave the world a better place? Again, only time will tell.

As I gaze out at their impossibly young faces I can only hope for the best and wish them luck as they tackle the world my generation and those that have come after are handing into their care. God bless and God speed Class of 2019!

On the Rocks

How are you luvin' that late season winter weather? Aahhh, Springtime in Colorado.

In anticipation of an upcoming trip, and suffering from a bout of cabin fever brought on by watching snow flakes tumble from the sky in May, I thought I'd grab my wife's camera and head up to Red Rocks Park to see what it looks like all covered in the white stuff. Now, Red Rocks is many things to many people. From concerts, to Film and Yoga On the Rocks, from Easter Sunrise Service to running stairs, not to mention great hiking trails and biking as well as being home to the Colorado Music Hall of Fame, Red Rocks is a gem of a park.

With the weather supposed to turn warm with highs approaching 80 degrees this week we have, just perhaps, left the cold and snow behind us for good although up in the mountains avalanches continue to plague backcountry travelers. When the snow starts to melt in earnest the rafting season should be outrageous. I did some filming at the Buena Vista river park of a guy getting in some kayak gyrations in what had to be some really cold water but he still looked like he was having a blast.

And while up at Red Rocks in the snowy weather I took some pics of some views of the park you might not get to see if you only visit on a nice summer day. The Park takes on an ethereal appearance in wintry weather for those brave enough to get out to see it. Soon enough we’ll be moaning about how hot, rather than how cold, it is. Aahhh, Springtime in Colorado... Get out and enjoy!

In Remembrance

20 years ago I was at work on another ordinary day. Like most people I was oblivious to the fact that the world as we knew it was about to change. My wife was anticipating the celebration of her birthday on April 20th, unaware that she would forever after share that date with another event about to unfold. Back then the internet was still new, cell phones still something to marvel at (the world's first touchscreen phone wouldn't come out until the following year) so the news that there had been a shooting came over the airwaves via radio and television. As archaic as that technology seems now, it was more than adequate in relaying the horror of events happening live in Littleton, Colorado. The shootings at Columbine High School were unfolding before our eyes.

My wife (and her brother) had both graduated from Columbine several years prior and their childhood home was just a block away from the school. Her parents were about to see their front lawn turn into a police command center. SWAT teams, who treated the event as a hostage taking, entered the school 47 minutes after the shootings started and five brutally long hours passed before law enforcement declared the school under control. 12 students and one teacher were to lose their lives that day as a nation came face to face with the then-new reality of school violence.

Some of you reading this blog may not have been old enough at the time to really remember the events of that day but I remember them as if they were yesterday. My commute to and from work took me by Clement Park which is adjacent to Columbine and which would soon begin to fill with thousands of teddy bears, flowers, and signs of condolence as a community as well as a nation found itself in mourning and shock over not just the loss of life but the loss of innocence. The shootings have sadly continued unabated since 1999 and we still seem unable to come to grips with any meaningful solutions to the underlying causes of these sad events.

In September 2007 the Columbine Memorial was dedicated and opened to the public. My wife to this day cannot bring herself to visit the Memorial. Candidly, my first visit was only a matter of weeks ago when I took a friend who was visiting from out of state and it was just as difficult a visit as I had imagined it would be. Now we find ourselves at the 20 year Anniversary of the Columbine shootings. The local media has been covering the upcoming anniversary from every possible angle. Remembrance events are planned during this week and crowds will gather out of respect for those no longer with us. The Memorial, I think, needs to be experienced more quietly so that you have the peace and quiet to ponder what happened so long ago and what has happened in the years since. As I sometimes do I have collected my thoughts and emotions through my photo- and videography. For those too far away to visit, or who still find such a visit too painful to contemplate, I share this humble and respectful view of the Columbine Memorial in remembrance of the lives lost that day. They are not forgotten.

A really, REALLY big hole in the ground

As promised in my last blog, my intention upon leaving Phoenix was to stop in at Meteor Crater, Arizona. From the Highway, US-40, you can't really see anything, other than a sign, that would hint at what lies just 6 miles ahead. Turning off at exit 233 I could still see in my rear view mirror the snow-capped mountains towering over Flagstaff 40 miles away. but everywhere else all I could see was the arid, desolate plain of the high-mountain desert. There is a nice looking RV park right at the exit but I followed the signs and kept going down the paved road that leads to the Meteor Crater Visitors complex.The only way to see the actual crater is to pay the admission fee that gives you access to the rim overlooks so if you come by hoping for a quick easy free view of the crater you'll be disappointed.

Meteor Crater is privately owned by the Barringer Family and has been since Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer from Philadelphia, came to the area in 1902. Interested in the site as a potential source for mining iron ore he bought four placer mining claims giving him ownership of the two square miles containing the crater. I'm always suspicious of privately owned national landmarks but with Meteor Crater the family, in conjunction with the Bar T Bar Ranch that owns much of the surrounding lands, has done a nice job and the modern Visitors Center features a movie theatre, museum, gift shop and Subway restaurant for those that brought an appetite. There's a ten minute movie that explains how the crater formed (at first people thought it was volcanic rather than created by a meteor impact) and you can take a guided tour along a half-mile section of the crater rim or simply do a short stroll to the observation platforms right outside the Visitors Center. And no, you cannot hike to the bottom of the crater...

The crater was created in about 10 seconds when, about 50,000 years ago, a meteor 150 feet across, speeding through the earth's atmosphere at 26,000 mph, slammed into the ground excavating a hole 700 feet deep and more than 4000 feet across. You learn all this from the movie and the museum exhibits before venturing outside but actually seeing the crater with your own eyes will still take your breath away. The crater looks and feels extraterrestrial as you gaze down on it from high up on the rim. Although human eyes did not witness the impact (as people are not thought to have been in the Americas that far back) Native Americans were certainly aware of the crater long before the advent of European explorers. The first known written account was made in 1871 by one of General Custer's scouts (for years the crater was known simply as Franklin's Hole).

There are an estimated 200 plus impact craters known on earth. Some are huge, hundreds of times the size of Arizona's, but Meteor Crater remains one of the best preserved and most accessible. So if you're driving by on US-40 and you see the signs I encourage you to take an hour or two and go see something you just don't see everyday. Here's a quick video tour I shot during my visit...