Travel photos: Gorignak, part 2

A followup to this. Goblin Valley State Park is not a terribly big place, compared to things like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, but it is profoundly weird. The story behind it is that the whole place is made out of fairly soft sandstone, but there are layers a bit harder than those above and below. The result is that it erodes, but oddly. A harder “capstone” will protect softer rock beneath it, resulting in round boulders perched atop columns. These are the “goblins.”

One interesting feature of the sandstone is that it is very good at absorbing sound. While wandering around the park, I rounded a corner and found a group of a dozen or so boys, twelve-ish or so in age. And as non-Ritalined boys are wont to do, they were whooping and hollaring like it served a purpose. Very annoying. However, as I stood and waited for them to move past (I want to take some photos without them in it), they went around a bend… and there was dead silence. No, they didn’t shut up. But the walls and columns did an astonishing job of absorbing their noise.

The valley is a shallow depression, sort of a bowl. Noon in early June is perhaps not the best time to wander the valley… with the sun directly overhead, there was little that could be called “shade.” And there was absolutely no such thing as a breeze in there. And with the sound absorbing nature of the surroundings… it was dead quiet.  Hands down the strangest place I’ve ever been, geologically speaking.