Revenge of the Muddy Goblins (2/2) December 31, 2001 - January 1, 2002 again on low clouds, then about muddy goblins, New Year celebration, and a very weird guardian angel near Area 51 (second part of two).

	Utah Mormons really knew how to pick a place to live!

On New Year's Eve, or Monday, we had to say goodbye to Moab. Thousand miles means about twenty hours behind the wheel (not counting stops), and we would not have managed all that on New Year's. Few miles out of Moab, we took a turn towards Canyonlands National Park. A famous attraction with alleged breathtaking vistas showed us only fifteen feet visibility -- so we made a U turn and headed back out. Reaching the lower edge of the clouds again, interesting rocks in the distance lured us to a hike. I must say that Mormons picked a beautiful landscape for their state -- red rock, green trees, white snow -- and if you're lucky, blue skies -- are a powerful primary color combination.

	Beautiful rocks inviting for a hike

I drove, after we got back from our small hike, and just as we were debating why a car in the opposite direction would possibly want to flash its headlights at us, we saw a crash number ten. A straight and level road in front of us was scattered over with "dug-out" plastic roadside posts and an overturned pickup truck lay in the next curve. Around it, two youngsters scoured and dragged various stuff formerly attached to or contained within a camper (an popular attachment mounted on top of a pickup bed turning it into a cheap RV). They, too, insisted they were all right and help was coming, so we carefully drove around them and left. A discussion topic "how could anyone possibly overturn on a straight and level road" lasted us almost to our next attraction.

Goblin Valley is a State Park -- having the significance that our annual National Park pass does not apply there. We had to make self-payment -- you write your data (car license plate) on an envelope with tear-away write-through flaps, insert some change into the envelope, and drop it into a slot, attaching a torn-away top flap to your windshield. After a few turns I almost drove into a ditch, for there were three goblins standing right there, near the road. I confess that their round large heads invoke images of Disney cartoons rather than of scary and vicious rock-dwelling creatures; the more fun it was walking among them later.

	Capitol Reef reaches from Goblin Valley all the way to Grand Canyon

The process of goblin creation is similar to "lids" found on some Czech sandstone formations -- differences in hardness of various layers of rock material are eroded by water, and further smoothed out by grains of sand carried by wind. What is surprising, is goblins' size -- instead of impressive sandstone towers, you literally walk among "petrified crowd" of dwarfs, about ten to fifteen feet tall. There must be thousands of them in the little valley -- standing at the bottom, "jumping" out of the surrounding walls, watching entryways into the valley.

For a substantial part of our visit there, we were alone among the Goblins. A larger RV stopped at the parking lot, but its inhabitants only gazed at the valley once, and then again disappeared inside. Goblins dwell in a desert -- there are not many bushes nor grass around them, and during a wet winter (snow, rain), the valley easily changes into a river canyon, or a series of ponds. A little mud would not scare us away, though, so we merrily slushed through and took pictures, thankful the place was not full of kids and their mothers.

	Goblin Valley A desert full of muddy dwarfs

And on and on we drove, away from the goblins and into the desert, on roads straight like a ruler, where civilization thins out and is humble. With approaching night we began to feel hungry. We reached a threshold in a small town, Delta, UT -- next civilization, Ely in Nevada, was about one and half hour driving away, and the risk of getting there after closing time was real. Sid got a task to turn on his food-sniffing nose, and to find a diner. He found Leo's Loft Steakhouse, claiming that "in parts where landscape practically consists of cattle, they must have figured out how to do steaks right". A waitress asked for our reservation first with some uncertainty in her voice (it was, ehm, New Year's Night), but then found a table for us. Our company was rather mixed -- several farmers in flannel shirts, contrasting with a lady in her forties dressed in a "Sunday" garb (a miserable perm, miniskirt, and a gold-sequined T-shirt) -- a small town stays a small town no matter where you go. Then there was a family with two children, also formally dressed, two retired ladies, and a couple dominated by a relatively heavily drunk blonde, who kept trying to sit on her (about five years younger) partner's lap.

	Carol & Goblins Water and wind carefully form and eventually destroy existing goblins, but there are whole armies ready to jump out of the surrounding slopes and invade the Valley.

I must say that they not only could do the steak right, but I have not eaten such good meat for a long time. It was even cooked exactly to our specification -- mine was pink in the center, Sid's was raw, but not bloody. To finish it off, we ordered dessert. We have nicknamed usual restaurant cakes "mufflers" and try to avoid them, but this was something different, yummy. Being still in Utah, a New Year's toast was out of question (and several hours remained till midnight), but our great food made up for everything.

The rest of our way that night befitted the arrival of a new year -- a clear, frosty night with a huge moon, snow that reflected its light back, so we could see like during daytime, a snow-covered desert and low, yet impressive mountains in the background. We could not help but stop and exercise a little with our tripod and camera, until our fingers hurt with cold. Eventually we reached Ely, found a motel that was far from frothing casinos and celebrating crowds. A receptionist was playing a guitar, said that he does not celebrate New Year either, and found us a room relatively far from other guests.

	Goblin here's one of the big boys

Trying to have a breakfast in the morning, we found out that a coffee shop we knew from last year was closed, and had to look for competition. Unfortunately, American breakfast here in the West consists invariably of fried eggs and bacon, or fried eggs and a sausage, or fried ground potatoes (hash browns) and a hamburger. I usually make a scene and beg the motherly waitress, who calls me "honey", to bring me a sandwich and a salad (which appear on lunch menu only). It results in sympathetic looks -- how could the poor thing survive a whole day without something warm and fried in her stomach?!?

	New Year's Eve the most romantic New Year's Eve I ever had

Another motherly person, a cashier, commented on the wonderful weather and how this new year starts so well, and she was right. For next fifty miles, the car went all by itself -- a straight road, interesting landscape (who can ever claim that desert is boring?), simply idyllic. Then we descended from a plateau into fog, which was somewhat worse, especially when all my morning coffee started to announce itself. There's nothing to go behind in the desert, and so I was longingly scanning the horizon for some civilization. Unexpectedly, we ran into Black Rock Station. Just so you understand, the very address of this service station is "75 miles southwest of Ely on Hwy 6". Besides gas and some chocolate bars, Al and Carol Drayton also offer a bathroom for customers, and a corral with bisons. We chatted about weather and assured them that once the fog lifts, it would be beautiful outside.

	Black Rock Station a bison with eight feet emerged from the fog...

Sid's note: as we drove out of the fog, we entered a large, sunshine filled valley. There was something strange in the road ahead of us, an obstacle not quite a bike, not quite a car. As we came closer, it turned out to be a person, a man, with long hair and long beard, with a visionary, unreal gaze that went over our heads towards something distinctly other than just two travellers in the desert, driving a white car. White knuckles showing, he clutched on to a bar of a half-empty shopping cart -- in a wrong direction, on an empty road, seventy miles away from nearest town. We carefully avoided him; even if we picked him up, how would we tow his cart? Anyway, his appearance was somewhat reinforced by the fact that it happened northeast of the infamous Area 51, where all kinds of weird stuff is said to happen. Just read on...

Well, within next few miles I received an answer to a question from previous day: how can someone crash a car on a straight, dry, empty road, on a sunny day? Out of stupidity, and quite easily. I attempted to spit a chewing gum out of my window, and I forgot that vision in my right eye is quite poor -- turning my head left erased the road ahead from my mental "screen", leaving only blurry road poles moving around me at seventy five mph. And they kept moving closer. I tried to correct it with the wheel (I think at that moment Sid was already tugging at it, too), but the result was that the car started swinging from side to side and we were going on two wheels for a while. So I let go and allowed the car to go wherever it would. In our case it meant going into the desert. This one contained, sadly, a dry wash, and the cruise control was still on, working hard to maintain set speed -- we rushed through the wash somehow, I only remember geysers of dirt and sand. What a New Year!

Eventually we came to a halt. Sid unwrapped himself from wires to our computer and GPS, and some other stuff that bounced through the car, and hurried out to survey damages. I expected some horrific loss (like an engine spilling its guts, broken-off wheels, or at least a punctured cooler or some other gizmo), but the first assessment found only a crunched foglight and ripped mudflaps. Bushes that grow in the desert tend to be quite resilient and so I reckon some got wrapped around our wheels. Sid backed out carefully onto the road, where a chap in a pickup stopped meanwhile. We told him that we were OK, he informed us that there was no phone anywhere near and have we seen his dog? We have not, and so he left again.

	A New Year's morning in Nevada How can anybody crash the car on such a road? Easily. Ask Carol!

Back on pavement, we discovered another issue -- our wagon's right (Sid's) side tires were both partially deflated (I may have to limit Sid's food quota ). I left my husband busy exercising with a foot pump we carry, and walked a few hundred yards to a road maintenance station. Considering several trucks and other heavy equipment parked there, one could expect them to have a compressor. Assuming, of course, that somebody would be there at all, on New Year's Day. Fortunately the one guy living there chased away dogs, admitted to possessing a compressor and disappeared in a garage. He helped us re-inflate the wheels, check the wagon again with Sid, agreed that there was nothing obviously torn, and wished us good luck while trying to reach Tonopah, NV, 60 miles west.

	Shortly after "landing" it does not look so bad -- except that road is quite far and we nearly missed a small bridge (marked with an arrow on bigger picture).

To be honest - I would not be sure that this run-down small town, reminding of a gypsy camp, would be of any use in case of need to repair something. There was no need, fortunately -- our tires held, they must have simply bounced off the rims during my attempt to drive on two wheels. I always used to slightly distrust Sid's stories that he claims having heard from commercial moviemakers who, after finishing their job, tried to flip a Subaru Outback over in the desert, and could not. Now I think that my attempt to flip over should be counted as valid (especially the phase involving the dry wash, which we took along the creek bed). We owe our lives to our wagon, plus saving all the expenses for towing a crumpled heap of metal, and the cost of a new car.

Our wagon took us happily all the way home -- upon me insisting to be allowed to drive again, I covered another three hundred miles; this time trying to stay on the blacktop . Sid finished the rest and now surprisingly calmly bears all hassle of necessary small repairs on his metallic buddy.

The only thing we still ponder is a question whether we were very unlucky (and crashed), or whether we were really really lucky -- hence -- was it a revenge of muddy goblins, or are goblins actually nice folk?

Copyright © 2002-2005 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.