Wild Horses and Goblins

7-2-2016

DAY 14

We left Moab today to explore Ding and Dang slot canyons. The weather and road conditions had other plans for us so, because of flash flood warnings, we ended up hiking to the narrows of Little Wild Horse Canyon and then checking our Goblin Valley State Park. To be honest, I'm pretty happy this is what we ended up doing.

On our hike up Little Wild Horse Canyon we met a really nice Mexican family from Denver. They had 2 kids and we promptly lost the trail and ended up hiking about an extra mile to get back on the trail. Once we were back in the right canyon, it became more beautiful every step we took. The rock colors and erosion patterns were striking. Upon reaching the narrows, we had to wait because there were a few people coming the other way and you can only fit one person at a time through them. It was so fun trying to squeeze through them and experimenting with high stemming. We took a bunch of pictures, but they don't really capture how cool it was.



Since we couldn't hike the full loop with Bell Canyon we ended up having time to check out Goblin Valley which was so cool. There were goblins everywhere! Papa had looked up an awesome rappel for us to do in the Goblin's Lair - a 90 ft rappel into a cave. The only trick was that we had to find the cave. Oh my gosh - we wandered all over the place in the hot sun looking for this thing. Finally, we saw some people who pointed out the webbing for the rappel. Then we just needed to get to that point which really tricky trying to get up and over some of the steep goblins. It was so worth it though! Rappelling into the cave was so different from the other rappels (and it was nice and cool). We all had a blast doing it. Then, we were able to hike out the other end of the cave and had a 1.5 mile hike back to the car. I wasn't sure James was going to make it. He eventually made it back to the car, but he was covered in mud (even on his nose)!

We all piled back in the car again and headed towards Torrey, UT to meet a friend of Mama's named Guy. We got to drive through Capitol Reef National Park and even tried looking for a dinosaur bone that Mama had found a really long time ago. Well, that was like finding a needle in a haystack. We arrived at a campground around 7:30pm, so we set up our tents quickly so that we could eat.

Guy's family was staying in the same campground, so we picking up his kids, Gordon and Lillian, and went to a delicious burger place called Slackers. Gordon is my age and Lillian is Maya's age. We played Telestrations at the restaurant and we were all happy to be with other kids. Guy and his wife, Bianca, met us there, we had ice cream and then went back to the campground for some sound sleep. It was a good, although tiring, day.