United States
Goblin Valley
Thousands of mushroom-shaped hoodoos standing in a Mars landscape that time forgot.
The valley floor is a playground from another planet — thousands of mushroom-shaped hoodoos, some squat and bulbous, others tapering to impossible points, standing in clusters across rust-coloured sand like a crowd frozen mid-conversation. The light shifts and the shapes shift with it. At dawn they cast long shadows. At noon they glow copper. At night the Milky Way arcs overhead with nothing to compete against for a hundred miles.
Goblin Valley State Park in Utah's San Rafael Swell sits between Capitol Reef and Canyonlands, surrounded by high desert with the nearest settlement — Green River — 48 miles north. Unlike most protected geological sites in the American West, Goblin Valley allows visitors to walk freely among the formations. There are no marked trails across the valley floor, no ropes, no restricted zones. The hoodoos, carved from Entrada sandstone by 170 million years of erosion, range from knee-height to several storeys tall. The Henry Mountain Bison Herd — one of the last free-ranging publicly owned herds in North America — grazes the plateau above and is occasionally visible from the approach road. The landscape's resemblance to Mars has made it a filming location for science fiction productions and a testing ground for planetary exploration equipment.
Family
Children can scramble, climb, and explore freely among the hoodoos — the formations are stable, the ground is soft sand, and the lack of restricted zones turns the valley into the world's most otherworldly playground.
Friends
The campsite sits right above the valley with unobstructed views of the Milky Way. Spend the day scrambling through formations that look like they belong on another planet, then cook a Dutch-oven dinner under a sky so dark your shadow appears by starlight.
- Unlike most protected sites, Goblin Valley allows visitors to walk freely among the hoodoos — there are no trails, no ropes, and no restricted zones in the valley floor.
- The rounded mushroom formations are stable enough to scramble on and low enough for children to climb without technical equipment.
- Henry Mountain Bison Herd, one of the last free-ranging publicly accessible bison populations in America, grazes the plateau above the valley and is visible from the approach road.
- The nearest settlement is Green River, 48 miles north — the isolation and the Mars-like landscape have made it a recurring filming location for science fiction productions.
Dutch-oven dinners cooked at a desert campsite under the Milky Way.
Fry sauce — Utah's mayo-ketchup obsession — with burgers from nearby Hanksville.
Scones with honey butter from a roadside bakery in Green River.
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