Valley of the Gods

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The lady at the Grand Staircase visitor center and the park ranger at Goosenecks State Park both recommended that I drive the Valley of the Gods, an area in southern Utah with a 17-mile unpaved road through a landscape full of towering buttes. The Valley of the Gods is administered by the US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management.

So after Goosenecks State Park, I followed the directions on the map from the ranger at Goosenecks State Park to the Valley of the Gods. The buttes all have names like Franklin, Rudolph and Santa Claus, Rooster, Setting Hen, Castle, Lady in the Bathtub, but for the life of me I just couldn't figure out which butte was which as many of them looked the same, and I had lost some sense of direction and I couldn't figure out where I was on the map. 

But, in the end, it was a drive worthy of the AWD Subaru Outback (which now desperately needs a car wash) and took about an hour. I was not disappointed, and I was also very grateful that I did not break down or get a flat tire. If that had happened you wouldn't be reading this blog post; you'd be reading a news article about some road tripping idiot from the East Coast who thought he could drive through a desolate, arid, and unpopulated area all by himself, and make it out alive.



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