Our First Taste of Dispersed Camping at the Temple Mountain Campground, Utah

 

This was our first taste of dispersed camping. Dispersed camping is dry camping - no water/no electric/no septic and usually no cell service. The big advantage is that there are no fees. You camp for free.

Plenty of room for our trailer. There were vault toilets and fire rings. We set up our portable corrals for our horses.

Normally, the space is on BLM or some other public land. We camped at the Temple Mountain Campground East outside of Goblin Valley State Park. 

Temps were in the mid-80s, so we were riding in the early morning. We tried to ride in a dry creekbed next to the campground, but it was too rocky. My horse lost his footing more than once and went down to his knees. One fall he landed on his right side and pinned me against rock face. He was able to recover and get back up. I stayed in the saddle, with no broken bones, but some bruises on my right hip, a scrape on my right knee and my right ankle is also bruised. I called it and told Ari we needed to find another trail.

So, we left the creekbed and tried a canyon trail. The canyon trail was perfect. It was shady, cool, and simply beautiful.

To get to the canyon trail, we rode down the Temple Mountain Road to this dirt road.

Ari posing next to one of the goblins.

These rock formations were pretty cool.

Riding through the canyon.

That evening we drove to the Valley of the Goblins to enjoy the moon rise over the goblins.

We walked through the Valley of the Goblins. It was an easy hike and lots of cool rock formations.

Watching the moon come up over the valley was pretty spectacular.

The morning of our departure we drove to some pictographs that are about 1/2 mile from the campground. We certainly could have ridden there on horseback, but Ari wanted to do a quick drive and then pack up to leave.

The images look smaller than they really are. They are actually close to 6' tall, but they are positioned high up the side of the rock face. They are estimated to be from around 6000 BCE. I have no idea how someone climbed up there and painted these. Obviously their descendants are the same people who graffiti freeway signs.