Exploring Goblin Valley State Park in Utah (+ TACOS 🌮 and sculptures in Green River!)

After spending a jam-packed 24 hours at Capitol Reef National Park, hiking many miles, and eating pie, we have continued our journey east to Goblin Valley State Park. Goblin Valley is a valley full of soft sandstone that has eroded into hoodoos, which are uniquely shaped and resemble goblins. And today we're going to explore these crazy rock formations as well as visit some interesting sites nearby. One of the most suggested places from y'all when we said we were coming to Utah, it was Goblin Valley State Park. And this place feels like another planet. So I guess we should just say, welcome to Mars. So a little bit of history about Goblin Valley. While the area was inhabited by Native Americans for many years, the area was eventually stumbled upon by cowboys looking for cattle. And in the late 1920s, a man named Arthur Chapman was searching for an alternate route between Green River and Caneville. And he came upon the valley and he called it Mushroom Valley. And in 1964, the area was acquired by the state of Utah and became Goblin Valley State Park. One of the coolest things about Goblin Valley is that it's basically just a giant playground. There are some trails here, but it's mostly just a big wide open area where you can walk in and around and all through the hoodoos. There are three valleys that make up the park. And we hear that the further south you go in the park towards Valley 3, the denser the goblins get. This one looks like an elephant trunk. My dad used to make the best elephant noises growing up. Here's my attempt. That's a good one. Nailed it! Yeah, this one's cool. This like feels like a movie set. It's real life. Before we came, you know, I saw photos, thought to myself, yeah, it looks cool, but we did the toadstool hoodoos. This is going to be similar, just more, but this is crazy. There's tons of them. They're huge. There's big ones. There's small ones. Way cooler than I thought it was going to be. So wild. To everyone out there who suggested to come to the Goblin Valley State Park, thank you. This place was so much fun and out of this world. You can just hike as much or as little as you want out there. And we hiked about 4.4-ish miles. It was just so much fun to explore. Around every corner. It's even more just mind-blowing, I guess. I don't know. We don't know how to describe it. You just have to come here. I don't know if photos and videos truly do it justice, but we plan to do this hike to the spot called the Goblin's Lair. You basically start in the parking lot and then you hike all around the east side of the park. It's about 2.7 miles total round trip. It takes you to this big opening that you scramble down into. It's kind of like a cave, sort of. Technically, I think it's a slot canyon. People also rappel there, but we're kind of pooped. And also, the wind has picked up big time. The van is shaking a little bit. And sandy terrain plus wind is not that enjoyable. But now, we are going to head about 50 minutes north-northeast to the town of Green River. We came to the highly rated Tacos La Pasadita, which is... I don't know if you can tell, but we are under the canopy of a gas station. An old shell gas station. It's one taco truck here. And in our nationwide extensive research, we have come to the scientific theory that the best tacos come from an environment just like this. And per the usual, we got a ton of food. We both got a pastor taco and a carne asada taco. And then, what I think I'm most excited about are these things called vampiros, which are basically... Oh, yeah. Two tortillas with tons of melted cheese and meat inside. Oh my gosh, that looks heavenly. Everything's better with cheese. And we got a carne asada and a pastor, one of those. Amazing al pastor flavor. Way better than what we make at home. But it's fatty. It's juicy. There's a little bit of crunchy bits in there. The tortillas are amazing. The salsa and the cilantro and onion on top. Look at how much meat is on this little tortilla. It is overflowing. Just how I like it. It's so simple. Just meat and tortilla. But the meat is cooked perfectly. I don't know exactly... It's windy today. I don't know exactly what cut of steak this is, but it is so tender. It is just tender. It has a nice little grill flavor. It's simple, but perfect. This looks so dang good. How can you beat that? There's meat, cheese, tortilla loaded with cheese. Oh my goodness. So tasty. We saw one review that they said there's too much cheese. That's not a pro... I don't consider that a problem. Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. There's a little bit of like the crispy cheese that kind of was griddled a little bit to give it a nice little crunch. Oh, and then the tortilla is amazing. The meat. This is the pastor. So dang good. This place is like the biggest win. Oh, probably my favorite meal we've had in Utah so far. So as we were ordering our tacos and vampiros, we saw this thing on the menu and we had to come back and get it. So this is a bionico, which is a Mexican dessert that originated in Guadalajara in the 90s. Apparently there is a ton of banana in there, apples, strawberries, then they top it with a bunch of granola, coconut flakes, and then if you can see on the bottom, just loaded down with sweet cream. This looks decadent. How have we never had this before? This is like a fruit salad, but way better because it's not healthy whatsoever, but it is so creamy and rich and sweet and the crunch of the apple and then like the crunch of the granola and the coconut flakes with the creaminess. Wow. So this basically reminds me of a tres leches cake, minus the cake part. Add in the apples. So dang good. But you have the sweet cream, the strawberry, sometimes banana, a lot of similar flavors as the tres leches. This is so stinking good. When we were researching Green River, we came across some photos of two really interesting sculptures that sit on top of this hill right next to town and also right on the side of the highway called Ratio Blocks and Elements. And we just went and checked them out, but it is so windy out right now that there was no way we could talk. So we'll tell you the story about them from the quietness of our van. So a little backstory on why these even exist. There's a man named Herbert Steiner who wanted to leave something immortal. So he hired an artist from Australia named Andrew Rogers to create these for him. And he basically said, people will not remember who I am, but this is something I can leave that will be immortal. So Ratio Blocks is a 44 foot high, 42 foot wide stack of 53 cement blocks based on the Fibonacci sequence. Each block weighs four and a half tons, which is just slightly heavier than our Sprinter van brisket and is 39 by 39 by 68 inches. And the center column of the piece, which reaches 42 feet high, is topped by a gold leafed block. The other sculpture here, which is called Elements, contains four 132 foot high columns, one that is topped in 23 karat gold, which are designed to represent the four elements, water, earth, wind, and fire. We had read that it was really hard to get to these sculptures, but all we did is we, from town, we just crossed the railroad tracks and immediately turned right onto some gravel road, parked there, and walked up the hill. It was super easy and any car could probably do it. But we have one more stop, one more interesting stop we are going to make here in Green River before we head out. The world's largest watermelon slice. Okay, just kidding. It's a wood watermelon slice, but it is 25 feet long and it's the world's largest watermelon slice. It was built in the 1950s for the Watermelon Days Festival, now called Melon Days Festival, and it takes place every mid-September. Green River is actually the state's prime grower of watermelons and said to be home to the world's best melon. Watermelons like to grow in sandy soil in desert climates, which Green River has both of, which results in a happier and sweeter melon. You can get the melons all over town in the summertime, so unfortunately we're not here at the correct time of year, but we love watermelon. It's probably my favorite fruit, so if you're able to come try it, let us know how they are. We just moved about 30 minutes closer to Moab, where we found us a nice big wide open field, mountain views, and there's some cute cows here that we're hopefully going to hang out with over the next couple weeks. But this is going to be our home base for our final Utah adventures. But don't worry, we got some really fun stuff coming up. This one looks like a wizard to me. You're a wizard, Harry. All Harry's thinking is where's Jermine? Jermine? Hermione? Jermine? Hermione. Yeah, more like Herhine. That's all Harry's thinking.