Forget Disneyland...

...Goblin Valley is the coolest place on earth!

Have you seen the movie Galaxy Quest? Hilarious! Loved it. Remember the part where the crew goes down to the alien planet to get a replacement barilium sphere? And the Captain ends up fighting the pig lizard?


Did you know that wasn't a Hollywood set? Nope. It's a real place, located in Utah. It's call Goblin Valley and is possibly the coolest place I've ever visited.



We drove down one afternoon during Boo's spring break, after having the worst luck getting ready. Seemed like everything went wrong. The Man and I were both frustrated. He was ready to call the whole trip off but the kids would periodically rush up to him and gush about how excited they were to go camping. So we persevered. It was supposed to be fairly nice while we were camping but that wasn't the case. When we arrived at Goblin Valley, the wind was so strong and so cold that we piled on as many layers as we could before getting out of the car. Once we got down into the valley, it wasn't so bad. Besides, we were too busy looking at each other and saying "This is so cool!" to really notice the weather. We're geeks like that.

I told the Boy to pretend he was a Goblin. I love the face he's making! And really, he doesn't have to try hard to be very goblin-like.

Da Boo tried being a Goblin, too, but she's just too dainty to pull it off.


The kids had a great time running around the rock formations, trying to find actual goblins or at least where they might live. While we were there, we managed to find a couple geocaches (which are the real reason we even go outside at all). Then The Man decided to test my strength...


While Baby and I waited below, The Man took our two eldest and climbed the green dome. Remember how I required Happy Pills to prevent irrational freak outs? Remember how I stopped taking them? I tried to only look while taking the picture but I ended up staring the whole time they climbed and scooted. Can't remember if I actually breathed, though...

A-caching We Will Go!

On the way home from Steamboat, we just had to pull out the ol' GPS and do a little geocaching. After all, picking up a few more caches was what this trip had originally been all about. We only found four because the kids didn't like the fact that we wouldn't let them out of the car. Still, it was fun.

The first one we stopped at was a multi-cache. This means that were are more than one stages to find before you find the actual hide. In this case, the first stop was a historical marker placed by the Daughter of the Utah Pioneers. It told the tale of Jensen's Ferry that helped so many pioneers make it across the river. There's even a tiny replica of the ferry on top of the monument.

To find the next step, you had to find a date on the marker, then using that date, plug the numbers into a coordinate and voila! You had the completed coordinates to the site of the cache, which wasn't very far from the marker. I was wearing sandals. The Man had to go find this one.

The second cache of the day was actually located in the front yard of a cacher. That was a little awkward, walking up to the front of someone's house and trying to look like you belonged there while looking for a cache. After that one, there was another historical marker as a virtual cache. A couple reasons why I love geocaching is because we find all these awesome parks all over the city, that we would have never known existed if they hadn't been harboring a cache, and that we learn abstract pieces of history. In this case, the marker spoke of the town's first bank and how the bricks for the building were originally mailed via the postal service from Salt Lake City because postage was cheaper than freight! This was a virtual cache, requiring the cacher to write down a crucial piece of information from the actual plaque in order to claim it.

This one was fun! The Boy about blew a gasket when we pulled up...well, just have a look for yourself.

We were passing through Vernal, Utah, which is very close to Dinosaur National Park. They take pride in the dinosaur-ness and have the ancient amphibians on virtually every building. This guy changes with the seasons.

Now, most of this stuff you've learned from my previous posts on the sport. So here's the next lesson: Travel Bugs. These are very specific to the geocaching game and are highly sought-after items. The travel bug can be anything: small toy, plastic card, stuffed animal, etc. As long as it's small enough, just about anything works. The thing that sets is apart from everything else in the cache is the dog tag attached to it. These dog tags carry an ID number, which, when entered into the Geocaching website tells you many things about the travel bug: who started it, where it's been and, most importantly, where it wants to go. See, every travel bug (or TB) has a goal. For instance, a plastic astronaut figurine might want to visit locations (or caches near those places) important to the Space Race, a rubber crawdad might want to see the various lakes or streams of the world, or a small Jeep might want to go on adventures while entering you in a contest to win an actual Jeep. We've found several TBs and have tried to send them on their way towards their goals. We also have a geocoin, which is similar to the function of the TB but is, in fact, a coin and not attached to anything. It's even a Utah Geocoin and we log it into every cache we've visited as a way to "track" the miles we've cached. It's just for fun and we don't leave it in those caches; it stays on my desk. Right next to my chocolate calendar.

LONDON! Day 11: Geocaching

Now a little less soaking wet and with the whole afternoon ahead of us, we did what any person would do: we went geocaching! Since it was early evening in London, that meant it would be early morning in Utah. We called my good buddy - and fellow cacher - to get some info from her. During my many hours of working hard at the convention (read: being bored stiff), I was able to do a little (read: a LOT) of Internet browsing. So I wrote down a few geocaches in the immediate area of our hotel. While my buddy looked up some information for us (see? I knew hanging out with early-risers would come in handy), we realized something: we were standing in Hyde Park, in the infamous Speaker's Corner, no less.

Hrmmm...why exactly is this spot famous? Beats me. Looked pretty ordinary, actually.

After getting directions, we realized the cache was no where remotely close to where we were, which tends to happen a lot while in London. Nothing is close. We headed back to the hotel to get the GPS (essential to successful caching), my caching notebook, and also for a potty break because really, who wants to spend nearly on dollar on a public toilet?


First geocache was a webcam cache. See the two camers just above the curtained window? In order to claim a visit, you must stand in view of the camera, have someone else go online and copy the image of you, and then you post that along with your log to the cache website. By now, it was early evening. We called the Crazy Grandparents and asked my mom to be the one to save the image of us on the webcam. The kids got to see us on the webcam! They got very excited, wanted to know if we were right outside. Ooops...maybe not such a good idea. But we got the image and moved on.

The second cache was just a few blocks away, in the Tube's Paddington Station. The clue on this cache said that if we looked in a certain place, we might see someone famous. Hrmmm...whatever could that mean? And then we saw this:

Yup! That's Paddington Bear! He was found in this station by Mr and Mrs Bear, who then gave him the name Paddington. In order to claim this cache, you had to find the words on his suitcase and then email them to the cache owner. Done! What's next? Well, remember how I said that this area of town was known as Little Italy? It's because there is a canal. On the canal are these long boats.

The last cache was along the canal.

Here is the Man trying to look nonchalant while there are other people (or muggles, in geo-speak) present, people who might find the cache and - not knowing what it is - take it, ruining the fun for future cache seekers. So we try not to draw attention to what we are doing when we find an actual cache. This one was a small tube, fitted with a strong magnet and tucked in such a way that it looked like it completely belonged there. To claim this one, you sign your name on a rolled up strip of paper inside. You usually have to bring your own pencil on these, as they are very small.

By now it was getting dark and we were exhausted. And we were sick of eating in restaurants. Instead, we stopped at the little market by our hotel, picked up bread, milk (in the cutest little jug!), and chocolate. I intended to return home with half a suitcase full of English chocolates. Had to settle for a half full grocery sack instead. See, we had a lot of coins. The international money changers don't accepts coins, so we had to spend them. Used a good portion right here at the market, getting all kinds of chocolates: organic milk chocolate (for my sister), stuff called Maya Gold, Turkish Delight (kinda like jellied, chocolate covered perfume), nearly a dozen different Cadbury bars that I'd never seen before, and even a Kit Kat (but with the smoother European chocolate on it, it was a different experience). So back in the hotel room, we watched odd shows on TV while munching on bread schmeared with jelly, drank milk and savored the chocolate. Our last evening in London.