Arches National Park

I hope I never lose the sense of wonder I felt when I first saw the landscape out here. This part of the country (and southern Utah in particular) has some spectacular/bizarre/other-wordly formations unlike anything else in the country or even the world in certain cases. It's why Utah can claim five national parks in just the southern third of the state (with two others just outside its borders). And each of those five parks offers unique features from the others. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine what types of features Arches National Park offers.

This picture was taken a week before we visited the park

I mentioned previously that we are loving our national parks to death. Since Covid struck, Americans have been getting outside in record numbers. On the one hand, this is great! On the other hand, small parks like Arches are being overrun.

We first attempted to visit arches on October 3rd. We got as far as the sign pictured above, and we were met with a large programmable road sign that said something to the effect of "Park full. Turn around." Further research (which would have been wise to conduct before we came) revealed that the park recommends arriving before 8 AM or after 3 PM. We got there around 9 AM. Oops.

Fortunately, Canyonlands National Park was only about 10 miles down the road (see, an embarrassment of riches). We were going to Canyonlands the following weekend, but we simply switched them around.

Our second try was more successful. We woke up early and got to the park around 7:45 AM. There was already a long line of cars at the entrance station, but we got in. Once in, we only had trouble finding a parking spot once, but there were definitely people everywhere we went in the park. This was not the park to visit for a person seeking quiet communion with nature.

Quiz: What's the difference between an arch and a natural bridge? A natural bridge either has or had water flowing through it. And arch did not. Therefore, the forces that created them are slightly different, though the end result can be remarkably similar.

There are about 2500 arches within the borders of Arches National Park, where an arch is defined as an opening at least three feet wide. That's the largest collection of natural arches in the world. I figured there would be arches everywhere we looked.

We saw roughly 10 of them.

Where the rest are, I have no idea. I guess a person needs to do some serious backcountry hiking to find them. But I'm assuming the ones we saw were the more impressive of the bunch. If not, they did a terrible job laying out the park.

The ones that everyone wants to see are delicate arch (so popular that it shows up on Utah license plates) and landscape arch (either the first, second, or fifth longest in the world at 306' depending on which list you believe).

It's possible to view delicate arch from a distance at two dedicated viewpoints or from up close after a 1.5 mile hike. We did both. We intended to do the hike first, but the parking lot was full. So we proceeded to the viewpoint. By the time we were done there, some spots had opened up at the trailhead.

The hike was moderately strenuous, and much of it was on the sandstone itself. The payoff was quite stunning, as you can see from this Google Maps shot (which I have to use since there are no drones allowed in national parks... and because I don't own a drone).

It's bigger than it looks in that picture.

But it's not the biggest. Or not the longest, at least. That would be landscape arch. That was a much easier hike, being about a mile on a flat trail with no drop offs. Landscape is less conspicuous than delicate because it doesn't stand alone out in the open. Despite being able to see it from quite a distance, we didn't even notice it until we got fairly close.

Sure enough, it's really long. And really thin, being only 6' thick at the thinnest. It's amazing to me that it's standing at all. And by the time you are reading this, it may not be. Or it may stand for thousands more years. No one knows. A huge chunk fell off of it back in 1991, which either helped the arch (because it's carrying less weight) or hurt the arch (because it's thinner)... maybe. The point is, nobody knows. It'll stand until it no longer does, and then there will be a new longest natural arch in the world.

We closed the day out at double arch, from within which we viewed the sunset.