The Grand Gallivant: Arches National Park, Utah

The Courthouse Towers

I’ve wanted to visit Arches for a long time, especially since the iconic Delicate Arch shows up just about everywhere (including the Utah license plate). It’s hard to go into a park with such incredibly high hopes, but it still managed to exceed every one of them.

We arrived in the morning and drove up a huge series of switchbacks into the park. Once we crested the plateau, we entered a wonderland, with formations as far as the eye could see. A massive cluster of pillars and fins, called Courthouse Towers, loomed up ahead of us, literally taking my breath away.

We drove straight to the Delicate Arch trail and stepped out into the blazing sun, hiking the 1.5 miles to the iconic arch. I was afraid it wouldn’t be as big as I imagined it, but it was! 

Of course, there were also eighty bazillion people crowded around it, which tainted the moment a bit, but this is what you get when you travel in the on season.

We also hiked the Devil’s Garden Trail, which winds past seven arches, and takes you up on a sandstone “fin” with huge sweeping views all around. By this time I was starting to get a sun headache, but it was still incredible.

Landscape Arch— you can fit a football field underneath it

A double arch

Hiking down a steep sandstone fin

By the end of that trail, my head was throbbing and I felt weak and sick to my stomach— yay heat exhaustion! I couldn’t hike anymore, and I was disappointed to cut our day short at only 2:00. 

We did see Balanced Rock before we left. The Rock is the size of three school buses.

Fortunately, we got a second shot at Arches, after visiting Canyonlands the next day (more on that in my next post). Evening was drawing on, and thick gray clouds clustered overhead. We decided to drive to Arches since it looked like rain, and was better than just sitting around the campsite. As we drove there, rain began to thunder down on us, and we almost turned around. But we thought it’d be cool to see the park in the rain, so we persisted.

We parked at a viewpoint, gazing at the Courthouse Towers in the rain, and all the world around us seemed to glow silver. A freezing wind whipped our faces as we jumped out of the car and looked around. 

Then, gradually, the sunlight edged through the clouds, and within minutes, the sandstone was bathed in the most beautiful sunset light you could hope for— and a rainbow began to form. We stared, mouths literally hanging open, as the bow formed a perfect double arc in the sky, so vivid that it looked otherworldly. I had never seen a rainbow that intense.

We drove on, gaping out the window as the rainbow traveled with us to other formations in the park. At last it began to fade, but the sunset continued, pushing apart the clouds into pink and molten gold.

Some of the roads are under construction right now, so the first day we went the park closed at 7:00 and one section of the park was also off-limits— but today, the construction was at a halt, so the whole park was open as late as we wanted. We drove to the Windows district, which had been closed yesterday, and climbed among the massive arches, staring at the sunset all the while. We were bathed in a beautiful rosy glow, and again, it was hard to believe any of this was real.

At last the sun sunk behind the clouds and, as Tolkien would say, “Evening sprang into the sky.” We drove home in silence, in awe of what we had just seen. I will never forget it.

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