Arches National Park, Utah

We had only one day to explore Arches National Park, so we made the most of it.  We got an early start and our first stop was the famous Delicate Arch (you may recognize it from the Utah license plates).  The parking lot at the 3-mile trailhead was pretty full, so we bypassed that and did the one-mile viewpoint trail.  We could only see the arch from a distance but it was a nice angle for a wide shot and at that time of morning the light was good.  Notice how tiny the people are (they are on the 3-mile trail).  I’d always imagined that it would be much smaller, but it is immense.

If arches are your thing, this is the park to visit.  There are over 2,000 named and catalogued arches in the park.  So pick an arch, any arch.

Top: Landscape Arch, Double O Arch, Bottom: Turret Arch, North & South Windows

We had hoped to do the Fiery Furnace hike, which is a phenomenal ranger-guided hike through the labyrinth of fin formations and tight canyons.  But it needs to be reserved well in advance and because we didn’t know our schedule, we missed out.  (Next time, for sure!)  So we opted to do the Devil’s Garden hike instead.

The Devil’s Garden trail is the longest of the maintained trails in Arches – it’s 7.2 miles long if you do all the spur trails to see the arches (which we did) and you come back by the primitive loop trail (which we also did).  It’s not a particularly strenuous hike (there’s not a big elevation change) but it does require good balance and agility.  As we clambered over slickrock fin formations, we found ourselves executing the very technical climbing move called the “butt traverse” (scootching down on your backside when the incline is too vertical for walking).

What I loved most about the hike was seeing all the varied and fascinating rock formations.  The park is situated on top of a large underground salt bed.  Over time, the salt compressed and shifted the rock above into ideal positions to be sculpted by surface erosion into arches, spires, fins, and precariously balanced rocks.

Here is Kevin on one of the fin formations.  There were some stretches where it was very important to watch where you put your feet because of the drop-offs on either side. 

We were glad we started the hike during the cool hours of the morning.  The weather stayed pleasant all day – a balmy 77 degrees.  It was great to have a cool breeze while we were hiking.  It took us about 4 hours to finish the hike, and we were pretty exhausted but we still had the whole afternoon to try to see as much of the rest of the park as possible.  Luckily it’s pretty car-friendly, with lots of viewpoints and pull-outs.  Here’s one of the arches we saw over in the Windows area of the park.  It’s called “Double Arch” (Full-on Double Arch!  What does it mean?)

This is our last night in Moab.  We had a well-deserved pizza dinner at Paradox Pizza, right by our RV campground.  In the morning we are headed to Utah Lake State Park for a couple of nights.  I don’t think they have wi-fi, so there may be a delay in the next few posts.  Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, everyone!