For phenomenal views and few crowds consider this two day tour to Goblin Valley State Park and Capitol Reef National Park.  Goblin Valley has merited the attention of Hollywood movie producers who use this location for its unearthly landscape.  The maze of hoodoos are ideal for getting lost in nature while hoping to never be found. Capitol Reef keeps hidden hikes and back country dirt roads and saves them for only the most determined travelers. In Capitol Reef you get the feeling that this landscape has remained unchanged for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.  

Capitol Reef National Park is an overlooked gem among the many extraordinary destinations in southern Utah.  Rural highway 24 is the primary route for travelers visiting Utah’s national parks and it cuts through the middle of Capitol Reef providing the hurried visitor the feeling that they have seen the park. With no reason to deviate from the main route most tourists miss their chance to experience one of the most well preserved national parks in the west.  Capitol Reef provides opportunity to do some dirt road touring which leads to where many don’t dare to go.  These dirt roads provide access to the Grand Wash, Capitol Gorge, the Temple of the Sun and Moon, Glass Mountain, the Bentonite Hills, and views of miles upon miles of untouched landscapes.

Goblin Valley State Park is a quirky landscape scattered with bizarre rock formations called hoodoos.  The unearthly rocks laid out in a maze are often compared to the planet Mars.  The haphazard formations spark the imagination in childlike wonder while you make your own path through the mysterious hoodoos.  Here visitors can explore at their leisure for miles, scrambling on rocks while they discover some out-of-this-world terrain.  A few established trails lead to distant points of interest but there is no right or wrong way to navigate the park.