Goblin Valley State Park and Days Before Arches NP - October 12 - 14

Time to leave Capitol Reef and the van battery was dead again! We got a jump start from a fellow camper and headed east towards Goblin State Park. The skies continued to be dark and stormy after raining the night before. We planned on doing some quick provisioning along the way stopping at a store in Hanksville. The shelves were half empty and I was only able to find 4 out 10 items on the list. Nothing was terribly important that couldn't wait except coffee and there was none. We were in Mormon country and they don’t drink coffee but who knows if this was the reason or the store simply ran out. Regardless, we decided to drive about 36 miles beyond Goblin Valley SP to Green River to try another store and then come back. The drive was worth it because we returned with a new battery, a battery power pack to help Harry sleep, coffee and the rest of the groceries as well as great burgers for lunch. 

This also meant we had to drive back into the nasty storm that we had run parallel with getting to Green River. We hit thunder, lighting, high winds and torrential downpours. Then the temperature dropped 20 degrees in a couple minutes from 60 to 40 turning the rain into hail. We could see waterfalls of water coming off the cliffs, washes full and the Fremont River racing fast and high. This was the flash flood conditions that they warn you about when hiking the slot canyons and washes.

Perhaps it was the storm, red clay mud, many vacationing families or the tent that rolled 600 feet before planting itself on our hood bending the antenna that soured us on our choice of Goblin Valley SP. The valley was really cool with the ghoulish hoodoos and being a state park, Nina could hike with us but the mud was caking to everything and the trails through washes were not safe and in some cases closed because of the rain. We headed off the next morning passing again through Green River, picked up some melon and squash just picked from the Vetere farm and continued on to Moab, UT making a bit of a detour through Thompson to see some pictographs and petroglyphs. These were the best we've seen so far, some over 4000 years old!

We still had two nights before our reservations at Arches NP. There are many BLM campgrounds in and around Moab particularly along the Colorado River (bright red by the way from all the rain). We didn’t think it would be a problem trying to find a spot but we were wrong! After driving through at least 10, we gave up, tasted wine at a winery along the river, bought a couple bottles bypassing the state liquor store police and then headed back north to see if we could find the dispersed camping spots we had read about. This time we were in luck and found a great campsite along Willow Spring Road. Lots of space for Nina to run and a couple buddies she could play with. We also met a couple folks who were with a jeep club. They were doing a lot of backcountry driving up through Arches and back over to the La Sal Mtns. This is definitely the land for off road vehicles. Tempting!

Sunday was a day for exploring Canyonlands NP just to get a feel for what was there and then back to Willow Spring for the night. We probably could have found a BLM site this night but we really enjoyed where we were, more space with the bonus of another free night.

Tomorrow Arches!

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