8-10 August: We had planned to travel in a single day to Green River, Utah, but a closure of a section of Interstate 70 near Glenwood Springs due to a mudslide resulted in limited and lengthy detour options for us that seemed too long for a comfortable day’s drive. The happy solution was to leave Lowry’s a half day earlier and spend an evening and night with longtime friends Dick and Sonia in Granby, west of the Continental Divide. They are often on the road this time of year with their camper, but they were at home for Sonia to recuperate from recent rotator cuff surgery.
Our next campsite was in Green River State Park, which provided a pleasant shady and grassy haven in a hot and otherwise barren part of eastern Utah. This was our base from which to make a day trip to Goblin Valley, an hour’s drive away. The signature feature of Goblin Valley is a concentration of hoodoos, sandstone formations created when vertical cracking and subsequent weathering form intricate rock pillars. Most of the hoodoos in this park are concentrated in a flat valley surrounded by steeply eroded cliffs, giving the appearance of a community of gnome-like shapes towering over the visitors, who are encouraged to wander among the formations scattered across the valley floor. The Carmel Canyon trail led us down to a dry stream bed at the lower end of the valley and then up past the iconic Three Sisters formation and up through a narrow slot canyon back to the observation deck and trailhead. It was a very hot day, and the campground at Goblin Valley has no shade or greenery, so we were only too happy to spend a second night at Green River before continuing toward California the next day.
