Down In The Valley Of Goblins

Goblin Valley has been on the top of my - Places to Go to Get your Butt Off the Lawn Chair 2015 List.- Despite living in Utah for the past 7 years I had never heard of it. I came across some some pictures at the beginning of the year, daydreamed a little, and pinkey swore to myself I would go ASAP ( As Soon As you-have-Pesos).

Come August, we rounded up 9 of our closest anddddd not-so-closest-friends and packed up two cars to their maximum capacity. As usual I was micromanaging everything and had to make sure we had we didn't leave ANYTHING we needed behind (what if someone loses a button? Sewing kit = necessity) but before you assume that it was my fault that we left an hour and a half later than we planned let me say -
1. Thanks a lot, super rude of you. and 
2. It wasn't even my fault at all.

We got to our campsite at about 11:30 pm, full of dreams and leg cramps. Thank goodness we are all so resilient. I could hardly sleep because I WAS THINKING ABOUT ALL THE POTENTIAL FUN THAT WOULD HAPPEN WHEN I WASN'T SLEEPING. Logic, ladies and gentleman. Come morning, with that hella pretty gold light the rising sun created, we participated in the most important meal of the day, strapped our over sized fanny packs on and made our way to the most important part of the trip.

The Hike: Ding Dang Canyon (It's Utah, It is our moral obligation to replace every bad word, even in the naming of our canyons)

The Hikers: Just a bunch of innocent 20-ish year olds who didn't know what they were getting themselves into

We started the hike with such optimism. Optimism we would later need to cling to as we risked out lives. One of us was even shoe-less - by choice - (this isn't a new millennial idea of a good time). This hike has the best variety of terrain, views, and material. The chunks of granite along the trail were so gorgeous it could easily be made into the Kardashian’s counter-tops. It was fairly easy…. until we hit our first problem. There had been a lot of rainfall a couple days before making there some left over deep stagnant puddles. No big deal, this is what being the wilderness is about!  We'll get our legs wet! 

But after a while these puddles stopped being puddles and more like an unknown abyss of swimming water. It was practically a paper-rock-scissors battle to see who would go in first. Imagine a big bowl full of leftover orange soup so thick you can’t see the bottom of your bowl and you’re trying to find a spot to rest your spoon but it just keeps sliding into the unknown deepness of your soup! Now, imagine some sticks, and some spiders with small bodies a really long skinny legs who can swim ON TOP of this soup and I think you kind of get the idea.

Despite the 1 foot drops we had to navigate (we got real lucky at some parts) and the fact that the super sketch water up to our chest, it was hands down THE BEST hike I have ever been on. All in all, a 6 mile hike that should have taken about 3, 3 1/2 hours ended up taking us SEVEN. We were just happy we came out with all of our body parts still in a somewhat working order.