Goblin Valley

If you have never been to Goblin Valley, you really should.  I am so glad Emily kept telling me about this place enough that we finally made it there.  It was amazing!  We camped in the park and had a great site.  The kids loved climbing on the rocks and playing in the canyons.  We could have never left the campground the whole week and they would have been perfectly happy.

The second bonus was that we could bring Skai along...nothing like and extra 60 pounds on your lap!  He was an adventure in and of himself.

It was chilly at night, so Jacob liked to climb in with Dad to keep him warm.

Camping with cousins...nothing better! 

Dave rigged some rope to give the kids some repelling practice.  This was a hit and all the kids loved carrying around rope everywhere they went.

Patty, Emily, and her kids joined us for the first few days, it was awesome to play with them.  Hiking with cousins is so cool, because they motivate each other.  We hiked up to a very fun cave with a ranger, which is always so informative, and watched people repel down inside of it.  We also hiked little wild horse, a very fun slot canyon, and we tried to hike up to a window, but didn't have good directions.  So we wandered around a bit and found a canyon to explore.

After the cousins left the kids were a bit lost wondering what to do with themselves, but they quickly found other friends in the campground. Including some friends they had made when we camped the year before in Escalante.  It was kind of comical.  We thought of making plans for next year=)  

Jacob writing his name in the sand.

 Spencer & Amanda in the hoodoo's.  We did a lot of exploring in here the last few days.  One day we came at dusk and the effect was really neat.  I didn't get great pictures though.

Spencer and Maren playing together.  I think my favorite part of camping with our kids is the time we spend together just being goofs.  No major agenda, no time constraints and lots of down time.  On our last full day here we took a drive to a small town to get ice cream, and ended up only finding one gas station in town.  Luckily they sold ice cream bars!  We did a small hike to a rock panel, which was cool and had intentions to see more, until we missed a turn and ended up missing everything.  Most of this drive was on dirt roads in pretty remote country, but we all goofed off and listened to fun music.  We had planned this to get gas, so we could stay one more day and do another slot canyon the following day, but a storm ended up rolling in and we decided it wasn't worth the thunderstorm risk to be caught in a canyon.