Spring 2022 Utah Adventure, 4.23.22 - 5.12.22, Part 10 of 12

We had spent six nights in Capitol Reef and I could have stayed another two weeks easily. But it was time to move on to the next part of the adventure so we packed up and drove east to Hanksville. After a quick stop at the Bull Mountain Market for supplies, we worked our way to Stan’s Burger Shack for lunch. Stan’s makes a great burger and the milk shakes tower over the top of the cup so you have to get on it before it starts melting. Mmm, Mmm, Mmm!

From Hanksville it was only thirty-two miles to our next campsite at Goblin Valley State Park. This was an exciting return for me. I had been here thirty-two years earlier with Mike Kent and Mike Dunlap. It was only my second visit to southern Utah and we had a monumental trip seeing Goblin Valley, hiking the Bell Canyon/Little Wild Horse Canyon Loop, camping high above The Maze in Glen Canyon, driving out to the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park to both Horseshoe Canyon and to the Doll House deep in the Maze. I remembered how much fun we had at Goblin Valley and couldn’t wait for the others to see it too.

There are no other campgrounds remotely close to Goblin Valley so it is a hot ticket and very hard to snag a reservation there. We were on our computers four months to the day before we wanted to be there and at the precise moment they became eligible to reserve we worked our magic and got in. The Goblin Valley Campground has but one loop, with some sites reserved for tents (more on that later) and also a few reservable yurts.

I had big plans for our stay at Goblin Valley. My original plan included among other things, taking Bridgit on a hike up Little Wild Horse Canyon. This is one of the finest slot canyons in Utah and it was so utterly impressive the first time I did it years ago that I even wrote and recorded a song about it. But I digress. We only had two nights reserved here so I ended up scrapping the hike for a Jeep excursion. The reason for this was that I had seen a photograph of a spot that at sunrise was just incredible. I really wanted to be at that spot just before the sun came up. To do this involved leaving our campsite at 4:45AM, driving the thirty-two miles back to Hanksville and another ten miles further to a Jeep road off UT-24. In the semi-darkness we would drive up this Jeep road past a huge rock known as Factory Butte. Some six miles up this Jeep road we would then turn off onto a spur road that would take us to the edge of a mesa cliff to a spot called Skyline Overlook. It is also referred to as Moonscape Overlook because the scene below the mesa at sunrise looks like you are standing on a high cliff somewhere on the surface of the Moon. I wanted that shot!

But that’s not all. From there we would continue back on the main Jeep road, driving the Jeep across Muddy Creek and then working our way back to Goblin Valley, making it an 81.6 mile loop. Now this all sounded great to the others except for the parts about getting up at 4:30AM, driving in the dark on an unfamiliar Jeep road, dangling off a cliff waiting for the sun to come up, crossing a far more serious river than the Fremont and generally doing insane things.

Undeterred, I had done my research. I had even called the Hanksville Field Office to try and get detailed information on the crossing of Muddy Creek which I had heard can be very dicey if the water is high or if the sand is wet along the bank. Unfortunately, they called me back the day after we were to go on the Jeep excursion so that was no help. My only other source for information at this point was the ranger at the Goblin Valley Visitor Center. By his account, he had been on way too many rescues out there and the crossing of Muddy Creek was notoriously known to have stranded its share of intrepid 4 wheelers. It sounded a bit too iffy for me to risk and I knew the others wouldn’t like those odds so I scrapped that whole plan. Instead we decided to scope out the main valley floor on the day we arrived and then drive out of Goblin Valley in the opposite direction on the loop until we reached Muddy Creek and then just turn around there and come back. I knew there was some really cool scenery on that stretch so not getting to Skyline Overlook wouldn’t be a total loss. Looking back now, we truly did make the most of our short stay in Goblin Valley.

Once we knew what our plan would be it was time to check out the main valley floor where the namesake goblins lived. From the campground the valley observation parking lot is just minutes away. Winds were forecast for the two days we were there with sustained winds of twenty-five miles an hour with gusts as high as sixty. For our arrival day these winds were supposed to crank up around 1PM and taper off by about 8PM. Still earlier than one, from the observation point, Bridgit and I wandered down a staircase right onto the floor of Goblin Valley. There we were immediately surrounded by strange rocks in all manner of shapes. Using our imagination, some were Smurfs, Toadstools, cartoon faces, etc… It was as bizarre a landscape as you’ll ever see.

On the far side of the valley a huge wall of convoluted rock rose up and encased the entire valley as if to protect it. We walked through the goblins back to the wall but by then Bridgit was getting a little overheated so she took the keys and headed back to the observation point. I was free to roam and roam I did. I spent most of my time along the back wall where there were tons of secret side canyons, grottos, caves and tall walls of spires. It was a fantastic fantasy land and I had a great time roaming through it all. Since it was a bit further from the observation point than the main floor of the valley, I barely saw anyone back there so it felt like I was the only one there at times.

By the time I got back to Bridgit the winds had really picked up and fine sand was blowing with no rhyme or reason. We headed back to the Navibahn for shelter. The winds howled and swirled in every direction so we had to shut all the windows and vents to try and keep the sand out. We brought the slideout in but it had already been battered by the dust storm and struggled to come in since the gears were full of grit.

This would last for hours and since we didn’t have hookups at this campground we couldn’t really turn on the AC. Things got hot and the winds were just getting more and more ferocious. To pass the time, our macabre entertainment was watching the poor mom and dad and the four kids with two tents trying to cook dinner in a dutch oven during the peak of the sandstorm. The winds would bend the tents all the way to the ground and when the kids got out to check on the tents they would be utterly bombarded by swirling fine sand in gusts strong enough to almost knock them over. This went on for at least a couple of hours, back and forth between the tents and the car, trying to defy mother nature in a losing battle. We felt horrible for them in our hot but windproof box.

Finally, as NOAA had predicted, at 8:03 the winds died and people began emerging from whatever shelter they had, wiping the sand from their eyes, blowing their noses to get the grit out of their nostrils and shaking their heads that were full of red dirt. It had been a wild one for sure but the rest of the night remained fairly calm.

Around 8:30PM when I was sure the winds had died I was itching to have a go at some night photography. I packed up my cameras and tripod and drove towards the observation point, stopping first by the road to hike a very short trail out to a rock formation called The Three Sisters. It was still the blue hour and though I needed my headlamp, it still wasn’t totally dark yet. I spent about fifteen minutes shooting there with no success at all so I moved to the observation point.

Goblin Valley has the distinction of being designated as an International Dark Sky Park which means there is very little light pollution to hamper shooting starlit skies. That would be great for Milky Way photography but I was actually after something else. I had already researched the sun and moon phases for the entire trip so I knew that there would be a 38% waxing moon on this night. That was perfect for what I had in mind which was to shoot long enough exposures to allow the moon to light up the goblins yet still be dark enough to get the stars in the background. By now it was around ten at night and it was pretty dark. With my headlamp on I carefully made my way down the stairs onto the valley floor. I didn’t want to stray too far from the stairs for fear I would get lost in the dark and with so many goblins all over the place that would be really easy to do.

I found some really nice goblins off to my left and set up my tripod and camera. For the camera geeks reading this, I turned my shooting format to RAW files, set the ISO to 1600, set the aperture to its lowest setting and switched to manual focus. And this was my downfall. At night you can’t even see what you are shooting at once you turn off your headlamp. The camera can’t see anything either which is why auto-focus doesn’t work in the dark. There are two ways that I know of to focus for this scenario. One is to go to a setting called live view, aim at a star, zoom way in on the star and then adjust the focus ring until the star is as sharp as you can make it. Another way is to focus on something far away during the daylight, put a piece of tape on the focus ring so it can’t move and then come back at night and do your shoot. Well for some reason I didn’t do either so I was blindly guessing if things were in focus and wouldn’t you know, they weren’t. I had the right situation. By exposing for about fifteen to twenty seconds I allowed the moonlight to light up the goblins but since I didn’t have the focus set properly none of them were worth saving. I did manage to get one shot that almost worked and it shows the potential of what might have been.

Spring 2022 Utah Adventure, 4.23.22 - 5.12.22, Part 10 of 12

Spring 2022 Utah Adventure, 4.23.22 - 5.12.22, Part 9 of 12

Spring 2022 Utah Adventure, 4.23.22 - 5.12.22, Part 11 of 12