Slick Stuff: Spring Break Part 1 Gobblin Valley

We did the big count down for Spring Break in April this year. I especially was excited to get my kids away from the hustle and bustle of life and keep them all to myself with no interruptions.

We were also excited because we were going on an adventure to visit a place where we had never gone before...

Goblin Valley

Arches

Moab

Green River

Well, some of those places we had never been to before and so we were excited to go exploring.

Thursday morning we woke up and headed to Goblin Valley.

Can I just say that this is the BEST place ever to take kids. it is so fun there to explore, hike, climb, see alien-like rock formations. It's so pretty and weird. There are caves and tall hills and trenches and round rocks and paths and no paths.

We had a BLAST!!!

This is us after we all made it into a cave together.

At this point my pictures are super duper out of order so the Goblin Valley pictures will be coming.

But, that night we went to the most disgusting restaurant in Green River... it was actually the ONLY sit down place to eat in all of Green River's one street choices. We thought we would give it a shot because we were so tired and so hungry we were ready to eat anything.

I had to take a picture of these peas. They came with my order. The were canned peas and just about the only thing on the planet that I refuse to eat. CANNED PEAS? Really? So gross and didn't eat them even though we were ravishing.

The pool was glorious.

Except the hot tub wasn't hot.

We all were a little sunburn.

Can you tell with our dramatic posing?

On Friday morning we woke up to do a little family exercising. Really Really Really fun...

for about 10 minutes, then they were done.

OK, here are our Goblin Valley pictures from Thursday morning. We spent about 3 hours here having a blast!

I love these kids so much!

It was fun to watch them helping each other hike up huge mounds of rock then come up with crazy poses for the pictures I was waiting to take of them.

Like I said it was such a fun place to explore.

It was it's own kind of unique beautiful.

I thought it was fascinating and can't wait to go back someday.

We had been told by several people to go to the "Little Wild Horse Canyon" hike which is just outside of Goblin Valley.

Even though it was only 80 degrees we still were really hot and felt the sun beating down on us.

But, I'm the kind of person that if we are in the area we have to go see the sights no matter what!

So, I told the kids that we would just take the hike for about 15 minutes in and 15 minutes out.

Well, it got so much more awesome and fun with each step that we ended up doing almost the whole hike which was about 90 minutes in and then 90 out again.

This gigantic hole was one way to start the hike. Ady wanted to try it then had to use rocks and a log to get herself out.

We opted for another way in.

After 5 minutes of walking Emmy sat and refused to go anymore. No pleading or prodding or bribing would get her to take another step. I then found a rock shaped like a heart and challenged her to spend the whole hike looking for heart shaped rocks. I was amazed because she found a TON! So many that we had to chose our favorite 4 and leave the rest.

All the kids took the challenge to finding heart-rocks.

The first part of the walk was pretty flat and nice then gradually progressed...

...to amazing formation and colors and lines and small passageways...

There was one part where we had to go under a log to continue hiking. There was a dad taking a picture of his kids under the log and we sort of got in their way. As I apologized I looked at the dad and saw that it was David Knighton an Elder from my mission. In fact he was the A.P. Elder that drove me to my first area. Double in fact, he was in a musical with my brother for several years and knew him way before he knew me. I don't know why I recognized him because he looks so different from 20 years ago and he wouldn't have ever known me... but it was fun to connect and take a selfie out in the middle of our hike.