Arches In A Day

Continuing on with my Utah National Parks posts... Post 2 - Arches National Park

The easiest and perhaps the best to get the most out of a trip to Utah's Arches National Park would be to drive. From around 9:30am to 5pm, we were able to see most of the highlights that the park has to offer. We had an Airbnb in Moab, which was only a 15, 20 minute drive away from the park entrance.

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Arches is pretty chill. There's a lot of driving involved to get to each arch, but most of the hikes are short and relatively flat, which was great because we've been hiking for almost a week straight now.You can see the arches in the distance as you start driving to each trailhead.

We started with a quick stop by  the aptly named 3 Gossips, which was filled with tour buses galore. They really do look like they're standing around talking smack:

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Our next stop was Balance Rock, which was empty when we arrived, but crowded on our way out. Wonder how long it's going to stay up there...

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North/South Window was next on our list. It's a very easy paved trail (1mi RT) to two Arches, and one of the first few that visitors get to see on their way in the park, so it's pretty packed.

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The secret is to go behind the windows, where not many people venture to. The trail ventures off into Turret Arch as well if one wishes to go, but we stuck to the windows. Also, these windows are pretty huge when you put a human next to it for scale:

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Double Arch looked the most picturesque. I spent the most time here, scrambling up sandstone and enjoying the view. And seriously, just take a look at how massive these things are:

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Everybody was lining up to take a picture in the big window... I opted out of waiting to take pictures of other people instead. This guy got the window seat all to himself:

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Delicate Arch was the most difficult of all the arches to get to. While most arches have a park-n-view type of hike, seeing Delicate Arch in person involves a 3 mile roundtrip hike with 480 ft elevation gain. As it is the most popular Arch in the park (and also featured on the Utah license plates), the trail was pretty crowded. It's a pretty moderate hike if the weather is hot in the summertime (always remember to bring plenty of water regardless), but we lucked out with overcast weather. It was a bit chilly with the wind up there at the time but it provided us with dramatic photos while we had lunch and waited for the right timing. Definitely worth the extra effort to get here!

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Having some fun on the way out from Delicate Arch. Mainly just using photography as an excuse to take a break:

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Our last stop in Arches national park to Landscape Arch took us through a longer trail (1.5mi RT) through Devils Garden Trailhead with a slight incline all the way up. Okay, so it wasn't that long of a trail, but at this point we were pretty physically and mentally exhausted!

The parking lot for the trailhead to Landscape Arch looks really cool:

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Landscape Arch is the longest arch in the world! In fact, the trail used to go under the arch but it's gotten more brittle over the years and the path was redirected after a series or incidents involving falling sandstone. Visitors can now only view the Arch from afar... It looks like a potato chip.

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And thus ended our short and sweet trip to Arches National Park. With our time constraints we were limited to only a day in Arches. I know there's much more to see than just the highlights, and though we originally planned on navigating through Arch's Fiery Furnace, we just didn't have enough time to do so! Hopefully on the next trip back :)

As one poster in the Arches gift shop said,

"Half the park is after dark!"

Next time I'm in Arches, I want to be able to stick around to get some cool night shots.

Speaking of nighttime shots...

On our way out of Arches National Park, the sun had already set and my friend mentioned that the sky seemed to be glittered with stars. I looked up from the passenger window -- man, she was right. We were on the highway, and yet the amount of stars we saw was easily double or triple the amount we'd see on a darker day back in the city.

We happened to be passing Fremont Indian State Park and we decided we needed to pull over to take some pictures.The timing and location of the milky way and where we parked our car was serendipitous:

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The view was worth standing in the cold for. I don't think I've ever seen the milky way so clearly before! It was beautiful, and a great end to a great day.

...And we almost hit an owl on the way out of the park. Or an owl shaped rock. Or just something in the road that looked like an owl. It was late, we were tired, it didn't move at all and we were so freaked out we drove out of there as fast as we could.

Hahaha. Another fun day in Utah.

Featured Photo: Balance Rock in Arches National Park, Utah