Our 4th park and my absolute favorite so far was Arches National Park. This is one of those places that you’re constantly asking yourself “is this a real place” and “am I on the same planet”. There are so many layers to this park and I’m determined that you could spend a week here and still not see everything. We entered the park from Moab which is a short 10 minute drive away. The nice thing about Moab is that you are within 30 minutes from both Arches and Canyonlands National Park. So if you’re looking for a nice place to stay while still being close to these parks, Moab is the spot. We spent 2 days there so we had enough time to tour the town and eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. We recommend the Moab Coffee Roasters for breakfast, The Blu Pig (BBQ) for lunch and the Josie Wyatt Grille (steakhouse) for dinner. There are multiple accommodations in Moab but we typically use Booking.com or Hilton.com to book our hotels. We spent $100 for 1 night at the Quality Suites. The night we came in, there was a lot of traffic due to road construction so we went straight to the hotel to get some sleep. We had an early morning and were able to hit the visitors center just as they opened. Since we were visiting in November and early in the morning, we had minimal traffic in the park and on the trails. This is another park that has a self-paced scenic drive that’s 36 miles long. We passed by the tall Courthouse Towers and the Three Gossips on our way in. We stopped first at the Sand Dune Arch where I captured some of my favorite photos that I’ve ever taken. The sun had just risen and was peeping through the arches and hitting the sandstone in the most beautiful lighting. We spent about an hour in this area and I honestly didn’t want to leave but the park was starting to get more traffic so we headed down the hiking path towards the Broken Arch. The Broken Arch isn’t really broken but there is a large crack in the top that gives it the name. The path is 1.6 miles roundtrip and is an easier path to follow. Once we got back to our vehicle we headed towards Devil’s Garden. We passed by the Balanced Rock on the way and captured a few photos of this 55ft boulder that’s literally balancing on a pedestal. Once we got into Devil’s Garden we wanted to visit the Tunnel Arch, Pine Tree Arch and Landscape Arch. We opted for the shorter 2 mile hike so we turned around once we reached Landscape Arch. You can extend the hike another 5 miles to see 5 additional arches along the route. Double O is a popular arch to visit and it lies at the end of the main trail. Lastly we visited the Lower Delicate Arch Viewpoint. The Delicate Arch trail is a 3 mile round trip hike and we weren’t up for any additional hiking at this point in the day. We were able to park and walk up to the viewpoint to see the Delicate Arch off in the distance. Some of the arches that we didn’t get to see but would like to go back and visit are the Double O arch, the Double Arch, the full Delicate Arch trail and the Fiery Furnace Trail (permit required). We were here an entire day and ran out of time to explore the remainder of the park. It’s been my favorite park so far (we’ve been to 7) and although I’m excited to find our next new favorite, I’d come back to this one in a heartbeat.
