Happy Anniversary – Day 2

On Sunday, we enjoyed sleeping in with no baby to wake us up, then went to church in Green River before heading down to Goblin Valley State Park. Nate had been there once in scouts, and we were both a little nervous that it wouldn’t be quite as cool being adults vs. 13-year-old boys, but we had a lot of fun. This is what it looks like:

We followed the ranger’s advice and went to “valley 2” instead of staying in “valley 1” where most of the people were (there are 3 valleys full of goblins). Most of the time, it was really quiet and we didn’t see other people for long periods. It was fun to walk around and explore without feeling like we had to follow a map or that there were certain things we had to see, but that we could just go wherever we wanted and create our own trail. We ended up making our way somewhat unintentionally to the top of a ridge that separated valley 1 & valley 2, and finding a path down the cliff back into valley 1 (it’s kind of hard to explain, but basically we went over the “mountain” instead of going back the way we came – around the “mountain”). It took a little strategy but it was a fun adventure.

Nate riding the turtle, and the shady spot we found to eat lunch in

Nate sticking his head in the picture…and me kissing the turtle

 

A lot of the time, we walked along the dry creekbed – unless it went places like this under some boulders. We still gave it a try and found we could fit into the crawl space underneath.

a very long jump we had to make across a deep vast canyon… I’m sure it was at least 10 feet wide or so ;) Nate insisted on getting a good shot of me jumping across, so I had to do it a few times. I’m posting these even though I look very awkward, especially in the last one.  

  

 

 

 

 

The fateful turning point – we had just decided we’d better start our return trip to the car when Nate saw this hill and wanted me to climb up it so he could take a picture. Once I got up there, I looked over to the other side and thought it looked like fun, so we went that way instead, thinking we would eventually have to go down and around the wall of rock – instead, we made our way up to the top of the ridge (we’re standing on the top in the picture above, right) where we could see over both valleys. It was amazing!

 

This is Nate on the creekbed we used as our path from the top of the ridge back to our car. In the picture on the right, the white-ish cliff at the very top is where we were coming down from.

We made our way home after Goblin Valley and decided to take a slightly longer route through Manti. Our drive along I-70 was amazing – lots of beautiful red rock and interesting landscapes. When we got off the freeway, we drove through a lot of small towns and beautiful green valleys. We stopped in Manti to see the temple grounds and take a couple pictures before finishing our drive. Nate’s parents were kind enough to keep Bennett for one more night so we didn’t have to drive even further to get him. On Monday, we got in a quick tennis match before heading up to get Bennett and enjoy a delicious BBQ with Nate’s family. We missed Bennett but he had fun with his grandparents and aunt Anna, and we enjoyed the freedom of just being by ourselves (like deciding at 10:30 at night to go out to get a milkshake!).  It was a great weekend!