southwest road trip - day 9 - goblin valley state park

When looking at routes for our southwest road trip Heather came across some information about a little-known State Park called Goblin Valley. It lies about 5 miles west of the road from Hanksville to I70 in southern Utah so we made the short detour to check out the interesting formations in this park. Wild Horse Butte marks the entrance to the park.

As we travel the road into the park we get our first glimpse of some "goblins". These formations are also a kind of hoodoo (like the ones in Bryce Canyon), but because of their unique geology, they have eroded leaving larger "heads" above the main columns.

At the main trail head there is a great view down into the valley filled with goblins. If you click on this picture to enlarge it you can see the trail on the left leading down into the valley and some people there which gives some scale to the size of the goblins and the valley itself. The white butte in the distance is called Temple Mountain.

"Heather and Friend". Between 140 & 170 million years ago, this area was on the edge of a shallow inland sea. Tidal deposits left alternating layers of sand and silt which over millions of years were compressed and hardened forming hard sandstone and softer siltstone. Wind and water have subsequently eroded the siltstone layers more quickly than the sandstone layers leaving the (harder) sandstone "head" supported by the (softer) more eroded silstone beneath.

A goblin jellyfish? We thought the way the water has eroded little gullies in the softer siltstone layer beaneath the sandstone cap on this "goblin" made it look like a jellyfish.

The Goblin King? This one sits high above the other goblins in the valley.

Mark in the "doorway" of a goblin house. (The imagination really went into overdrive while we were here!)

Looking from the valley back towards the carpark and Wild Horse Butte. The afternoon was hot (low 90's) and stormy. It doesn't rain much in Goblin Valley (less than 5" a year). The ranger at the park entrance told us that they'd had a huge thunderstorm the day before and received a third of their annual rainfall in that one downpour! We decided it was time to head out before the next storm hit.