After leaving Craters of the Moon (there is lava in Idaho!), we spent over a week enjoying hotel benefits in Salt Lake City. The city is beautiful and we found it incredibly easy to bike and explore. We visited Promitory Point, the Great Salt Lake, Temple Square and biked several miles along the Jordan River Pathway. Mark and I felt that we barely scratched the surface in this beautiful mountain town before heading southeast to explore Utah’s ‘Big 5’.

We arrived in Arches National Park in early October. I realize this won’t be popular opinion, but Arches didn’t start out being one of my favorite parks. It is beautiful and boasts having the largest concentration of sandstone arches in the world. However, it is a small park with 3 major pull off areas – The Windows, Delicate Arch and Devils Garden – which makes it feel incredibly busy with minimal escape from the crowds.

We hit many of the highlights on the first day. We went to the Delicate Arch Overlook, stopped at the various viewpoints and ended our day in the Windows Section. The Windows is a beautiful area of the park with several magnificent arches. The arches were overrun and loud; not quite a serene experience in nature! We encountered some memorable (and distracting) people in this part of the park:

• ‘Blue Shirt Guy’ stood directly in front of Mark when Mark’s camera was raised to take a picture. I mean, directly in front! Either Mark had discovered THE perfect picture spot or was wearing a ‘Cloak of Invisibility’ that I don’t know about! 🦸🏻‍♂️
• ‘Beads’ was wearing a neon pink Lycra outfit with purple beads in her long hair. Beads ‘struck a pose’ (or several of them) aiming for the perfect selfie Instagram angle. Perfection takes A LOT of time and we waited for her to finish before we snapped our pictures. Lucky for us, we attended her Instagram photo shoot at every arch in the area! (bonus: we also saw Beads in that same outfit on Day 2 at Delicate Arch). 🧞‍♀️
• ‘Green Lantern’s’ son was pushing down rock cairns that served as trail markers on a primitive trail. After the kid knocked down at least 10 cairns, we told Green Lantern that they are trail markers. His response was that we ‘don’t need to have such an attitude’ 🤦🏼‍♀️
• ‘Unbalanced Rock’ (not to be confused with the famous ‘Balanced Rock’ formation) wore elastic-waist dress slacks directly in the center of Turret Arch. Her goal was to have a photo taken in the arch while standing on one leg. Since she held the pose for a shorter time than camera shutter speed, the sequence went like this: Unbalanced Rock told visitors to move out of her space, then she lifted one leg, practically fell over, and finally yelled to her husband “Did ya get it?” His response was always “No!” and the cycle would repeat. 🧘‍♀️
• ‘Hipster Guy’ blocked us into a parking space and was exiting his Volkswagen as we approached; we asked him to move a smidge so we could drive our van out of the spot. His response was “Can I park here?” The sign clearly read ‘RV and bus parking’ and Mark responded as such. Hipster Guy then asked “well, is anyone gonna check?” 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s just a few examples of the various people that we encountered in one section of Arches NP. After a somewhat frustrating day, we evaluated cutting our losses and heading to another park. The weather for the following day was projected to be 60 degrees and rainy, and after much discussion, we came up with a strategy to avoid the crowds!

(Click on any picture to open the gallery and read the captions)

We started bright and early on Day 2 with a 3-mile (round trip) hike to Delicate Arch. The hike was interesting and the arch itself was stunning. Although we shared the arch viewing with several other people, we arrived early enough that it didn’t feel like we were standing shoulder-to-shoulder. The weather was clear and dry in the morning; however, the raindrops started on our hike back from the arch.

After Delicate Arch, we drove to an area in the back of the park called Devil’s Garden. There is a 3-mile (out-and-back) paved trail to a few arches and then a 4-mile primitive loop trail to several more. We found this area of the park to be quiet because it was steadily raining and the primitive trail started with a rock scramble! We were able to view the additional arches without the throngs of people. Furthermore, the trail had us walking across ‘fins’ (the top of sandstone slabs), standing on rock outcroppings to overlook this area of the park, and hiking the floor of the Fin Canyon. The beauty and solitude that we found on this hike helped change my perspective. We had an incredible second day in Arches National Park!

We spent our third (and final) day in the area riding our bicycles to Moab before driving into Arches to watch sunset. In a word, sunset was magnificent. The hills were a deep red for as far as the eye could see, with the snow capped La Sal Mountains in the background. We found ourselves at the Windows area and met a wonderful couple who were there to take pictures of the Milky Way and Turret Arch. We had many similarities and spent hours talking with them and taking pictures. It was a true highlight of our time in this area!

Arches is a beautiful park and is a ‘must do’ on any visit to southeast Utah. Just keep in mind that you may need to pick a long hike on a rainy day to find a bit of solitude. You might even be lucky enough to make some new friends along the way!

Outtakes

Throughout our time in this park, we did our best to take pictures of the arches without people. Afterwards, we used the magic of Photoshop to simply erase people from our photos. I thought it might be interesting to include a couple of pictures that illustrate the crowd in this park. Enjoy the below ‘outtake’ photos!