Goblin Valley Part 3: A 3 Mile Hike with 3 Little Kids & The Goblins of the Valley

So...after my wonderful shower fiasco, we were all dressed and ready for our day of adventure! We decided to hike over and see the goblins. At the entrance to the park, they gave us this nifty map with 3 trails on it for viewing the valley. We chose the shortest one(1.5 miles). We packed Jayne into the backpack carrier and put on our sunscreen and hats and headed out. We hadn't gotten far along the trail when I realized that this was not the best idea.

The trail was really narrow and the kids got tired of it easily. We did see lots of little lizards running around, which Jonah loved. It was hard to keep him moving because he kept wanting to stop and look for lizards.

Lilly's sun hat was a bit too small and wouldn't stay on. So my ingenious husband pulled out his pocket knife and cut two little slits in the back of it for her pig tails.
It took us a LONG time to get to the end of the trail. I'm not sure how long because none of us had a watch, but it felt like eternity! The kids were excited to see the 'goblins' even though Kaleb kept telling them that they were live goblins that would eat them. I reassured them that no one was going to get eaten.

When we did get to the end, we were at the observation point of Goblin Valley and we could see that there was a nice paved road going directly from our campground to the place where we were. We totally should have driven! But, hiking is what you do when you're camping, right? Here is a picture of the valley...We walked down into the valley and played on the goblins. The kids loved climbing on all the rocks and finding shapes in them.

Then we took a breather up at the observation point. Here's a shot of Jayne enjoying the view and the wind. Then we geared up to trek another mile and a half back to camp. Lilly was getting really tired by now and I carried her on my back for a while. Then she walked a bit and Daddy put her on his shoulders. So Nate was carrying Jayne and Lilly for the last half of the hike. I was bringing up the rear with Jonah. That kid was exhausted! I could barely get him to put one foot in front of the other. But...we made it!

The first thing we did when we got back to camp was eat lunch. Then the wind really kicked up and we were getting sand in our eyes. So we thought we'd try to get the kids to take a nap. How silly of us. Who could sleep in a hot tent when you can't open the door or window because of the sand blowing everywhere and the tent is making crazy loud noise from the wind that is threatening to blow us all to Kansas?! It didn't take us long to decide it was time to go home. The wind wasn't lightening up and there were more dark clouds headed our way. So we packed up our sandy belongings and hit the road. The drive home was pretty uneventful, we got rained on again and I was just trying hard to stay awake!

So, there you have it. Our camping trip, which totaled 24 hours of actual camping, 8 hours of driving, and at least three days to clean up and recover from it all.