Another planet?

Goblin Valley State Park is literally in the middle of nowhere. It was used in the filming of "Galaxy Quest" to represent Mars.  It is this one little spot among canyons and deserts where these formations occur in great numbers.  My friend had recommended it to me, so we stopped by to check it out.  It ended up being a great little place to go.  My kids have been great hikers, but their favorite thing to do on the hikes is to climb the structures.  This place had no real trails or paths, just a large place to explore.  We tried to find some geocaches here, but it was very hard to find anything, so we went away empty-handed.  But, it was a place we could just explore. You could spend hours there just wandering around.

Rachel, my model.  You can't tell, but in te second picture, she is in a pretty dangerous place.  The other kids are up there with her in this spot that we had to climb up to.  Dave took them out along this rock that slopes steeply to a drastic edge.  I was pretty nervous.  Pictures just cannot capture that well.

These formations were really neat.  These two looked just like big skulls.

Zack is the dirtiest kid ever.  I don't know how he can manage to get so much dirt on him everywhere.
 One of the geocaches told us to go through a hidden canyon and up some wall that children would need help getting over.  We think we found the canyon, but we had a lot of different options of how to go.   Dave and Rachel were determined to go up to the tops of all these branches to see if it might be the way.  this got them into some crazy places.  This path was pretty rocky and slippery.  Then, at the top, Rachel climbed up to get a better look.  From my perspective (in the picture), it never looked that bad.  But, Rachel was really freaking out about getting down.  She was really scared, and she never gets scared.  Even Dave seemed a little nervous as he was getting down.  I'm kind of glad I did not go get a better look.  We had quite a few spills in this area with some bruises and scrapes as the kids slid on the sandy ground.

Ahh, Matthew.  As we were searching for the elusive geocache, we had to cross this place that had large holes from the ground caving in.  It was a little scary, although it looked like they probably weren't that deep.  After we had decided that we had gone the wrong way, we turned back to try a different way.  Matthew was leading. But, as we approached these big holes, Matthew was nowhere to be seen.  We called for him and looked further, but there were quite a few obstacles that seemed large enough and dangerous enough that Matthew would not have done them himself.  We could not find him anywhere amongst all these formations.  I was convinced that he had fallen down a hole.  I called and called, to no answer.  I was really getting nervous and finally just headed all the way out of the canyon to find him sitting there on a rock.  I should have known that he would have done everything himself.  Apparently, he could not detect the panic in my voice because he thought it was funny that he was not answering our calls.

As Rachel and Dave continued to search for the geocache, they stumbled upon this cave.  For some crazy reason, they decided to check it out.  We had planned to search for another cave in the park, so we had flashlights.  Apparently, the cave is really tight at the opening but then opens up further back.  It only goes back about 100 feet or so, but Dave said it was a pretty scary thing to just go exploring in there.  But, of course, all the kids wanted to check it out.  As you've learned, I don't like small spaces.  I can do caves (although they scare me), but I did not want to go into such a small and tight space. As you can see, Dave barely fits in the opening.