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The Goblin of Goblin Valley Utah State Park

One of the first things you will discover when you begin to wander around Goblin Valley at Goblin Valley state park is that the goblins form a wide variety of shapes. Among the hundreds of goblins in the valley, I saw camels, skulls, monkeys, and snakes to name just a few. As I rounded one corner, I found myself face to face with what could only be the Goblin of Goblin Valley:

Goblin Rock at Goblin Valley State Park in Utah

the goblin of goblin valley state park in Utah

While there are a number of different formations that look like goblin rocks, this is the one that instantly proclaimed Goblin Rock to me. What do you think?

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Tour of the Moon Classic Cycling At Colorado National Monument

By Kristen Lummis (enjoy her blog Brave Ski Mom, like her on facebook or follow her on twitter @BraveSkiMom)

Colorado is full of classic bicycle routes, many of which can leave you breathless at a high altitude.

The Colorado National Monument ride is different. Located in western Colorado, just shy of the Utah border, Colorado National Monument offers cyclists never-ending vistas of stunning red rock canyons, pinyon-juniper forests, three seasons of wildflowers and a musical accompaniment of canyon wrens on almost any given day.

winding road through colorado national monument

The ride isn’t easy. No matter which way one rides the Monument (as the locals call it), it involves a significant climb. But with a top altitude of only 6,640 feet, a total vertical gain of 2300 feet, and a round-trip distance of 33 miles, this ride won’t leave you gasping for air.

rim rock road high point colorado national monument

The Tour of the Moon

For eight exciting years, between 1980 and 1988, the Monument was the location of the “Tour of The Moon,” a popular stage of the Coors International Bicycle Classic. During its heyday, the Coors Classic was the largest men’s and women’s pro-am race in the world, attracting the top teams and top cyclists.

In 1981 and 1985, cycling legend Greg LeMond won the Coors Classic. Other famous participants included speed-skating legends Eric and Beth Heiden, with Beth winning the women’s division in 1980. The 1984 film American Flyers, starring Kevin Costner was inspired by the Tour of the Moon and filmed on site in Mesa County.

Since the late 1980s, cycling on the Colorado National Monument has been limited to amateurs, enthusiasts and just plain crazy people. We fit into all three of these categories. We are certainly amateurs. We are most definitely enthusiasts, and my husband is sometimes considered crazy. How to else to explain why he would choose to ride up and down the Monument three times on one firecracker hot 4th of July? He didn’t ride the entire 33 mile circuit each time. But he did ride the difficult climbing section three separate times — in a row.

the steep curves of Colorado National Monument road

The USA Pro Cycling Challenge

In late August 2011, professional cycling returned to Colorado with the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. The Monument wasn’t one of this year’s stages. However, with a landscape like no other in pro cycling, USA Pro Cycling Challenge organizers are hoping to resurrect the Tour of the Moon for the 2012 race. The National Park Service may have other ideas. Citing concerns for protection of the park’s natural resources, an application by the Local Organizing Committee has so far been denied.

Local organizers have a number of alternate routes in mind for 2012. But it won’t be the same. Until the Park Service changes its mind, cycling on the Colorado National Monument will be limited to amateurs. This means that while most of us can’t ride with the pros, we can ride somewhere they can’t. And if you haven’t ridden over the Colorado National Monument, you should. It truly is a classic ride.

Park map of Colorado National Monument

When You Go

Colorado National Monument is located approximately 250 miles west of Denver, between the towns of Grand Junction and Fruita. The East entrance to the park is located approximately 5 miles from downtown Grand Junction on Monument Road.

Just past the East Entrance station is parking at the Devil’s Kitchen trailhead (on the left) or the Devil’s Kitchen picnic area (on the right, complete with bathrooms). Both areas have parking and are good places to begin your ride. Please note that all cyclists must have a steady white light on the front of their bikes and a flashing red light on the back. Cyclists are also required to ride single file (for more information on park requirements, click here).

From Devil’s Kitchen, the road switchbacks up about four miles, through a dark tunnel before plateauing at the Cold Shivers viewpoint. Traffic can be heavy along this portion of the road, but just about 1/2 mile past Cold Shivers is a turn off to Glade Park, a ranching community. After this point, cyclists pretty much have the park to themselves.

From here, it is another 5-6 miles of rolling uphill terrain to the high point of the Colorado National Monument. After the high point, the descent begins, with only one more significant uphill climb, at Black Ridge.

The Visitors Center (at mile 19) is worth a stop to refill water bottles and check out the new interpretive displays. Leaving the Visitors’ Center, the road descends rapidly through two shorter tunnels to the West Entrance of the park.

Leaving the park, cyclists ride east along Broadway, turning right onto South Broadway for about 4 miles. Another right turn onto South Camp takes riders back to Monument Road and back to their cars.

Back at your car, you’ve completed one circuit of the Tour of the Moon. That’s what the pro women rode back in the ’80s. The pro men did two back-to-back circuits.

Enjoy!

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Park Avenue Viewpoint Arches National Park

The first major stopping area once you have entered Arches National Park is at Park Avenue. There is a short walk to the Park Avenue viewpoint (accessible to all) which gives a spectacular view that you don’t want to miss. While other areas of Arches National Park are more famous, I found this to be one of my favorite spots. The view gives you a wide enough perspective to take in a number of large formations, but the valley limits what you can see so it’s not overwhelming. I also found that because there are no major arches along Park Avenue, it’s less crowded than other areas of the park:

Park Avenue at Arches National Park, Utah

view from Park Avenue Viewpoint down canyon at Arches

The information sign at park Avenue viewpoint gives the following information:

The sheer walls of this narrow canyon reminded early visitors of buildings lining a big city street. Rising majestically, these geological “skyscrapers” tell the story of three important rock layers.

These layers began forming more than 150 million years ago as tidal flats, desert, and beach deposits. Over time, more layers of rock, perhaps a mile thick, covered these deposits. Tremendous pressure from this rock compressed the buried sand into sandstone and cracked it. As erosion removed the overlying rock, the layers now exposed began to weather.

Within the past two million years, erosion of the cracks in the Entrada has left vertical slabs like the rock wall to your right. These slabs, called fins, are the first step in arch formation.

Here is a beautiful night sky timelapse video taken at Park Avenue viewpoint:

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Rock Climbing Sentinel With No Ropes Video Yosemite National Park

I just can’t imagine how anyone could do this without totally freaking out. 60 Minutes cameras were rolling when Alex Honnold free-solo climbed Sentinel (a 1,600-foot rock wall at Yosemite National Park) using nothing more than his hands and feet. That’s right — he is up there on that rock face without any ropes to complete a feat never done before. Just watching makes me dizzy:

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Barker Dam Loop Joshua Tree National Park

The Barker Dam loop trail in Joshua Tree National Park is often suggested for those with children since it is an easy 1.5 mile loop. The trailhead is east to find since it is right at the Barker Dam parking lot. You can also take the spur path off the main loop to see pictographs and petroglyphs and there are plenty of boulders for kids to climb to expel any excess energy they may have.

pictographs on Barker Dam trail at Joshua Tree National Park

While it is also possible to walk across Barker Dam, this activity is better suited for those that are older and have no fear of thin walking uneven paths with a drop off on either side as this video shows:

Photo courtesy of Omar Omar

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Best Hike at Goblin Valley State Park Utah

While there are a number of trail hikes at Goblin Valley state park (Curtis Bench Trail, Entrada Canyon Trail, and Carmel Canyon Trail), the best hike at Goblin Valley state park isn’t a marked trail at all. One of the wonderful aspects about Goblin Valley is that you can wander into the valley among all the goblins and explore to your heart’s content creating your own hike. Since the Observation Point makes for an easily recognizable orientation point, you don’t have to worry about getting lost or turned around as you wander.

As soon as you make your way down into the valley, you’re greeted with the goblins at eye level:

the valley floor at Goblin Valley stat park Utah

What makes wandering the valley so much fun is that around every corner there are more goblins hidden around unseen side valleys:

goblin valley state park

Hiking among the goblins also lets you see how playful they can be:

looking through goblins at goblin valley state park utah

There are actually three valleys which you can explore (be sure to take plenty of water) meaning that it is easy to spend hours wandering while seeing new goblin formations. For those that like to wander instead of following a preset path when hiking, this is definitely a destination you want to add to your list.

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Black Bear Cub Opens Car Door Great Smoky Mountains National Park

A good example of why you don’t leave car doors open. A black bear cub manages to pry open a door on a car at Great Smoky Mountains National Park and get inside. While definitely cute, it’s not a habit that young bears should be learning:

From the video information:

While going to our cabin in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we saw a baby bear cub pry open a barely opened car door and climb in. All of this happening while the mother bear and another bear cub waited a couple feet away. Nobody was in the car while this happened, nobody got hurt, the bear didn’t damage the car, and the bear didn’t get anything unhealthy to eat

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Sunset View Overlook Cedar Breaks National Monument

Sunset View overlook gives you a spectacular view directly over the Amphitheater portion of Cedar Breaks National Monument. The overlook is right next to the parking lot so there is no hike involved to get there, so it is definitely worth a stop when you are driving Scenic Drive.

Sunset View Cedar Breaks national monument

view from sunset view overlook at Cedar Breaks national monument

This is the description that the Cedar Breaks pamphlet gives about the Amphitheater:

Nothing is subtle about the great natural rock amphitheater of Cedar Breaks and its gigantic spectacle of extraordinary form wrapped in bold, brilliant colors… The Cedar Breaks Amphitheater is the result of many of the same forces that created other great Southwestern landscapes, including the Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon, and the Bryce Amphitheater. it is, however, unique in its own right as an amazing product of geological forces.

Shaped like a huge coliseum, the amphitheater is over 2,000 feet deep and over three miles in diameter. Millions of years of deposition, uplift, and erosion carved this huge bowl in the steep, west-facing side of the 10,000-foot-high Markagunt Plateau. Stone spires stand like statues in a gallery along side columns, arches and canyons. These intricate formations are the result of persistent erosion by rain, ice and wind…

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Mother and Baby Whale Die in Fishermen Nets in Machala National Park Ecuador Video

This is simply tragic. A mother and baby whale are trapped in fish nets (if you look closely, at 1:39 in the video you can see the nets underneath the whales as a lighter white/green color) which ended up causing their deaths. Other whales in the area are seen trying to free them. The men operating the boat didn’t want to free the whales because it would have destroyed the fishing nets:

This is the description from the video:

This video shows a mother and a baby humpback whale trapped in fishermen nets in Puerto Lopez in Ecuador. You will notice a group of larger male humpback whales trying to break the mother and baby free. The video was filmed on a boat from the Machala National Park for tourists that wanted to see the whales. The guides who work for the Ecuadorian National Parks and Ministry of Environment did not want to set the whales free because it would destroy the costly fishermen nets. The mother and baby whale died three days later.

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Moab Fault Arches National Park

With over 2000 arches at Arches National Park, you might think that arches is all the park has to offer. You would be wrong. The first paved turnout that you will come across once you have entered Arches National Park is one that describes Moab Fault. The pull-out gives a wonderful view of the highway you drove in on to reach Arches which also shows in detail the Moab Fault:

Moab Fault at Arches National Park

Your instinct will be to pass on by and most cars do, but it’s well worth stopping simply to get a better understanding of how Arches National Park was formed. It will only take 5 minutes of your time and the plentiful arches waiting on the other side of the ridge will still be there. If you think that you will stop on your way back, you may have great intentions of doing so, but the reality is that you likely won’t. The turnout is much easier to see on the way into Arches and by the end of the day of hiking you won’t have the energy to do so.

There is an informational sign at the turnout that gives the following description:

A dramatic break in the earth’s surface occurred here about six million years ago. Under intense pressure, unable to stretch, the crust cracked and shifted. Today, the highway (below) parallels this fracture line, called the Moab Fault.

After rock layers shifted, the east wall of the canyon where you are standing ended up more than 2,600 feet (792 meters) lower than the west side (across the highway).

Individual rock layers no longer line up horizontally here because of the faulting. The cliff across the highway looks much like the Entrada sandstone, but is actually composed of Wingate Sandstone — rock deposited about forty million years before the Entrada.

Moab Fault information at Arches National Park Utah

If the sole purpose of visiting Arches National Park is to see as many arches as you can, then the Moab fault information will be of little interest to you, but if you are there to learn, this five minute pull out is well worth the time.