SAN RAFAEL SWELL EXPEDITION!

The San Rafael Swell can be thought of as a "swell" or "uplifted bump" on the surface of the earth.  The exhibit below helps a visitor  see the unusual landscape in a three dimensional model:

Over time, the effects of wind, water, volcanic activity, floods, and temperature extremes,  caused the "swell" we look at today, to be full of structures with varying heights, shapes, and composition.
On numerous trips through Utah, I have driven through the section of Interstate 70 that bisects the San Rafael Swell.  The red line in the three dimensional model represents Interstate 70.

The photo below shows the divided highway snaking through the jagged cliffs of the Spotted Wolf Canyon, onto the desert floor.  The construction of the Utah portion of I-70 is listed as one of the engineering marvels of the Interstate Highway System.  As a two-lane route, Utah's I-70 was dedicated in 1970; but, the divided highway we use today was not fully completed until 1990.  Most of the area designated as a part of the San Rafael Swell is within Emery County in Utah, and you can access the Emery County Travel Bureau at www.sanrafaelcountry.com

When I visited this overlook in July, 2021, I saw people exploring on the cliffs below the parking lot, and I wanted to do the same!  However, I decided it was not wise to take off down the mountainside alone.

My son is used to rock climbing, so I waited to do my exploring until he was with me!

There are placards at the various I-70 overlooks, that tell stories about the history of this unusual area:

The Head of Sinbad is one of the best preserved ancient pieces of rock art in the world.  It sits unassumingly on a wall a dozen feet off the ground, in the desert wasteland of the northern San Rafael Swell.  Thousands of cars pass nearby every day, but most people do not know these examples of ancient art, lie just a few miles north of the paved highway.   The whole area around the anthropomorphic pictographs is named Head of Sinbad. 

Ghost Rock is a pinnacle along I-70 within the San Rafael Swell.  The legend says a cowboy on a foggy morning saw the top of the pinnacle protruding from a bed of fog, and thinking it appeared ghostly, dubbed it "Ghost Rock".

The name "San Rafael" relates to Saint Raphael, who is considered the patron saint of healing.  He is considered the special angel of apothecaries---meaning nurses, pharmacists, physicians, and others who minister to the sick.  Since both my son and I chose careers in healthcare, we could be included in that group!  Here is a photo a kind tourist took of us, as we started our trek across the rock outcropping:

I was thankful to be making a return visit to this area, so my son could evaluate the feasibility of various routes I wanted to explore.  In this photo, he is studying the rock composition, to evaluate its suitability for various types of rock climbing:

Although I am not a rock climber, I like to pretend!

The rocks here are full of cracks, that beg to be photographed!

Some of the cracks can even serve as a "chair" of sorts!

No visit to a place this amazing, is complete without a gesture of gratitude with my arms uplifted!

There are numerous layers to the landscape that make up the San Rafael Swell:

Just as this ceiling banner covers all the different rock layers of the San Rafael Swell model that is below it, so God's love covers all the different parts of our planet Earth.   And, it is God's love that needs to bind together all the various attributes (virtues) that Christians strive for.  I am using this concept as the visual aid for one of my First Place 4 Health (www.FirstPlace4Health.com) memory verses that says, "And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."  Colossians 3:14

Besides providing a visual aid for my memory verse, this trip was a wonderful time to "bind together" with my son (aka "family bonding time"), as we enjoyed the beauty of God's creation!
That is why a visit to Utah's San Rafael Swell, gave me "MILES OF SMILES"!!

GOBLIN VALLEY STATE PARK EXPEDITION!

It was a post card that first alerted me to the fact that there was such a place as Goblin Valley State Park.  It was back in the eighties, when my husband and I were on a motorcycle trip out west.  I had taken a photography course where the instructor advised the participants to always look at the post cards of new places they were visiting, to determine what was important to photograph/visit in a particular area. (This was before the days of the Internet, where you can just Google "Top ten things to see in such and such")

The word "goblin" may not denote anything other than Halloween to most people; but to me, it was a word I had heard and seen, almost daily,  all my life !  That is because I grew up and attended school for 12 years, where our mascot was a goblin, and I strongly identified myself as a  "Harrison Goblin"! 

So you can imagine how delighted I was to actually be on my way to visit Goblin Valley State Park!

 

What made this occasion even more special is that I was visiting with my son, who is also a Goblin! (notice his shirt has the Harrison Goblin logo on the front)

 

 I had visited the park back in July of 2021, but did not hike there because the visitor center had a sign,  warning of the dangers of venturing out onto the desert terrain in such harsh conditions.  The photo below shows that the outside temperature  was 93 degrees, but the warning sign in the visitor center stated the heat index was over 100.  (the large butte on the horizon, is the one used as a "landmark" for directing explorers back to the visitor center).

Ever since July, 2021, I had the goal of returning to Goblin Valley with a fellow Goblin, (my son), and here he is, walking into the Visitor Center, when we visited in November, 2021.  My goal was achieved!  Although there was no line of cars to get into the park on the autumn day we visited, the rangers told me that during the height of the pandemic, the line of cars waiting to get into the park, might stretch as long as a mile. (because people were searching for outdoor activities to do as a family unit)  If you want to check on how busy the park is on a particular day, the phone number for the Visitor Center is 435-275-4584, and their website is www.stateparks.utah.gov

 Once inside the visitor center, there are exhibits that tell about the park, and its location to the greater San Rafael Swell.  The San Rafael Swell is a massive anticline that was uplifted ages ago, and covers a large expanse in the state of Utah.  Interstate 70 provides a very scenic drive through the San Rafael Swell, and has scenic overlooks in several areas, that provide views which make for great photo opportunities. 

 

 

As the above photo shows, the gift shop also sells souvenirs, and the one I was looking for was a metal medallion for my hiking stick:

There is also a display of rock types:

 The park brochures recommend using the Wild Horse Butte ( shown in photo below), easily visible beside the Visitor Center, as your landmark in case you get lost exploring the park, since hiking towards it, will eventually get you back to the park entrance station:

 

 The scientific name for these "goblins" my son is gazing at in the valley below, is "hoodoos".  The hoodoos were formed through the erosion of Entrada sandstone, which was deposited ages ago, when the area was a tidal flat, situated next to an ancient sea.  As sand washed in with the tides, the surrounding area eroded into the sea, depositing silt and clay.  These components layered to form inter-bedded sandstone.  This tidal phenomenon is easy for me to visualize when I think back to my visit to the Bay of Fundy on the Atlantic Canadian coast, known for the greatest tidal fluctuations in the world!

In addition to the picnic tables under the covered pavilion, there was a picnic table on an uncovered ledge, right on the edge of the overlook.  By the way, I would recommend you take with you any meals you hope to consume at the park, as there are no foodservice facilities. 

From the area where the picnic tables are, there are steps going down to the Valley Floor:

My son, the Harrison Goblin, amongst the hoodoo goblins (he is the blue one)!

 Down in Goblin Valley, one can be a long way off, but still visible.  The dry channels seen in this photograph shows the downward direction that water travels, whenever there is rain. 

One of the first things I did upon arriving, was purchase matching Goblin Valley State Park tee shirts for my son and me, that we could wear while exploring the park;  my son set up his smart phone on a tripod, to take the photo shown below.  When you see the shape of the formations surrounding us, it is understandable why this place was originally called "Mushroom Valley".  Nature sculpts the unusual shapes through a process called spheroidal weathering.  Because the siltstone and shale layers are softer than the more resistant sandstone layers, they dissolve more quickly.  As vertical cracks appear, the sandstone's sharp corners are smoothed by chemical decomposition and erosion, forming the rounded caps and curves of these otherworldly formations. 

When I looked into lodging for us at Goblin Valley, I read they had yurts for rent, and photos showed they were in very scenic locations.  However, when I phoned the number to make a reservation to rent one of these yurts (800-322-3770), I learned they were not available during the time my son and I would be visiting.  However, the effort was worthwhile, as the operator said there was a yurt available to rent at a (somewhat) nearby state park, called Dead Horse Point State Park.  The result was that we ended up renting a yurt for an overnight stay, after all, when we visited Dead Horse Point State Park the following day .  (that experience will be the subject of a separate blog)

Since there are only two yurts for rent at Goblin Valley  (and the closest "big city" with ample lodging available, is the 50-miles-away Green River, Utah), this sign almost always says "Campground Full"!

Although there are some marked trails along the ridges surrounding the valley, there are no designated paths or hiking trails in the valley, so one can just wander around to their hearts content.  My wandering had a goal, however, and that was to find neat locations for photographs, like the one below where I am photographing my son through a "window" of orange sandstone:

We walked across the valley to a distant, aqua colored dome, and climbed to the top.  My son took this photo of me on top of the dome, hoping to show some of the fascinating landscape in the background.  One can see paths traversing the ridge behind me, that indicate where most visitors try to make their way to the top of the valley. 

To give you some perspective on where above photo was taken, in photo below, the light colored dome is the one we climbed and that I am sitting on, in above photo (notice there are two "windows" in the sandstone ledge on the horizon:)  Looking at this unique landscape, it is easy to see why the producers of the science fiction movie, Galaxy Quest, chose Goblin Valley, for the scenes depicting astronauts, landing on a distant planet in outer space. 

On the far right of the photo below, the viewer sees a top layer of lighter-colored stone, which the brochure says is part of the Curtis Formation.  It also says that the red cliffs on the edge of the valley will gradually erode and expand the goblin landscape.

This is one of my favorite photos, because it illustrates so well the effects of erosion on different types of stone.  Some of the rock layers erode faster than other layers, resulting in the overhanging ledges.  The official brochure for Goblin Valley listed the layers as Morrison Formation, Summerville Formation, Curtis Formation, and Entrada Sandstone.  The Entrada Sandstone shown in this photo is a fine-grain sandstone, along with siltstone, and gypsum.

Since my son has much longer legs, and is used to rock climbing, he made it to the "Top of the Rock" quite some time before I did!

 

 I took a semester-long college photography course when my son was a pre-schooler.  Every week we had a new assignment involving some principle of photography and composition to learn, so I took hundreds of photos of the cutest thing around at that time---my little boy!  To say I wore him out with photos is an understatement, and accounts for the fact that many of the photos in this blog are taken from behind him, to avoid his objections.  One of my favorite pictures I have from that college class in the 1970's is the black and white photo below ( we had to develop our own prints in the darkroom, for the course!)  His quote as a youngster is shown in the caption, and says, "When I grow up, I am going to climb big rocks."  He did just that, even summiting the famous "El Cap" in Yosemite!

We were incredibly blessed to have fantastic weather on the day we spent in Goblin Valley.  As the photo below shows, the walking surface was very dry.  This was an answer to prayers, because friends who visited this park when it was damp and rainy, warned that it was a very muddy trudge, in wet conditions. 

I am using this photo of me "pressing" against the rock surfaces, as the visual aid for one of my First Place 4 Health (www.FirstPlace4Health.com) memory verses that says, "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."  Philippians 3:14

The tiny black spot you can see in the photo below, is me with arms uplifted in gratitude.  I am so thankful I had this opportunity to explore Utah's Goblin Valley State Park with a fellow Harrison Goblin ---my son!  Spending time with him in Goblin Valley, gave me "MILES OF GOBLIN SMILES"!!