Goblin Valley State Park and Little Wild Horse Canyon

I’ll resume my posts on beautiful southern Utah, now that we’ve returned from our rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. Of course, that will be covered in future posts!

I really liked the name of this state park, and it took some doing to get there. We drove up from the SE corner of UT, to nearly the center of the state, to visit this interesting place. The alternating layers of hard sandstone and soft siltstone created goblins after wind and water erosion, while the formations in Arches occur because the substrate was mostly hard sandstone.

I went wandering down into the valley, and thought that a lot of the formations looked like they were made from Silly Sand (remember that from the late ‘60’s?).

The erosion created some pretty fanciful shapes:

The road leading away was gorgeous in its own right -

Nearby… down yet another long dirt road, we came to probably my favorite place we’ve visited so far. I had read about Little Wild Horse Canyon as a slot canyon that was accessible to everyone, and that you didn’t need technical gear to get through it.

The cottonwood sentinel in the wash leading to the canyon:

The beginning of the canyon:

I loved the variety of both colors and textures -

As I advanced further in, the trail became narrower…

…and more sinuous.

Steve had recently sprained his ankle, and couldn’t accompany me. So, I shot some video to share the experience with him (and you!).

More shots to share the curves and the colors:

(the narrowness surprised me)

This beautiful wall showed me the way out of the wash -

As we headed to our B&B near Capitol Reef National Park, we took the roundabout way (taking 3 hours) on a dirt road…

…and reveling in the gorgeous scenery:

We climbed out of there on some pretty tight switchbacks -

…and said goodbye to yet another breath-taking vista.