Arches National Park

Since we were hidden behind mountains all night, we awoke when the sun hit our little guy around seven and straight shot it from Capitol Reef to Arches National Park.

Driving through the mountain range with morning light hitting the mountains around us was absolutely beautiful. But once out of Capitol Reef, the land became flat with an occasional hill or two in the foreground. If it wasn’t for our new found love for country music to keep us somewhat entertained, it would had seemed like an even longer drive.

After such a boring drive, it was exhilarating to see the park entrance. Unlike any other National Park, the entrance and visitors center to Arches is at the bottom of a mountain. After a short film and a walk around the museum at the visitors center, Jason and I made our way up the mountain to the park.

My first impression of Arches can be summed up by one word: marvelous. Like most national parks, there is one main scenic road that takes you from one end of the park to the other. Since there is only one campground in the park, we ended up first driving the whole scenic drive to set up camp and eat some lunch. Of course I couldn’t help but take a ton of photos from the car as we passed the most amazing rock formations I have ever seen. 

You can’t help letting your imagination take a hold of you as your looking at the rock formations in Arches National Park. Every rock told a story or had a distinct feature that resembled something in our everyday world. For instance we passed the three wise men and a huge rock that truly was as big and looked just like a court house.

Not only are the rock formations mind-altering but the arches, especially the famous Delicate Arch, are awe-inspiring. Since you have to walk to see the arches, we decided why not take the longer hike to the up-close view of Delicate and Window Arch. Our first hike, to Delicate, was a work-out but rewarding. 

Once at the top we just had to sit from afar to take in the beauty of this arch. Then, as I walked around photographing, I was even more drawn as the arch began to really play tricks on my mind. From different perspectives, it was really difficult to differentiate on side of the arch from the other. It was very surreal.

After hanging out at the Arch we descended back down the steep trail. 

We then continued throughout the rest of the park and after seeing a few of the different arches and neat rocks we called it a night by our nice warm campfire.

I really would have stayed another night at Arches, however the campground was too expensive for not having any form of hookup or water, so we hiked out to Landscape Arch and set out for Cannonland National Park.