What a weekend! Actually, just Sunday was awesome. The weather actually wasn’t all that bad, but I’m not exactly disappointed that I didn’t go camping. I was bored Saturday morning and looking for something to do, and I decided I wanted to drive down into the Swell to find a new geocache near Calf Canyon. Then I got to looking in Google Earth around that same area, and saw a place that I’d noticed before where the Entrada Sandstone had eroded into what looked like the same kind of formations at Goblin Valley. The rock formations were about ¾-mile from Hamburger Rocks, so I wanted to hike into the area to check it out and place a cache.
It was already too late Saturday to start making plans to go that same day, so I made plans with Sam and Mark to go the next morning. It started out cold and windy, but by the time we made it to Calf Canyon, it was warming up. We hiked around in the bottom of the canyon for awhile–the kids played in some water and caught tadpoles, and we saw some very neat pictographs.
After spending more than an hour at Calf Canyon, we drove back the way we came and took the turnoff to Hamburger Rocks. We ate lunch there, then began the hike east across the aptly named Sand Bench. The hike was pretty easy, but it went slow because Bradley kept stopping to play in the sand. We finally reached the canyon rim overlooking the valley where the rock formations were supposed to be, and the view was incredible. It really was just like a miniature Goblin Valley. We played on the rocks for more than an hour, then placed a cache which I called Ghoul Gulch.
We packed a lot of fun into just that one day, and it more than made up for the boring day we had on Saturday. The kids have already asked if we can go back to Hamburger Rocks and Ghoul Gulch next weekend, and in turn I’ve been bugging Traci to come with us. She claims to be too busy, but we’ll see. 😉