September 1, 2025
Crossing off another National Park off my list is always an exciting time. Arches National Park held a lot of promise and boy, did it not disappoint!
At a little over an hour from Fruita, Arches National Park was a no-brainer for us. The only problem was, we were only in Fruita for one weekend, so the only opportunity for us to visit was going to be- surprise, surprise- a holiday weekend.
About the Park
“The NPS acknowledges, with respect, that Native people have been successful stewards of the land within the park since time immemorial. The NPS understands that the park is located within the ancestral and traditional homeland of the Hopi Tribe, Las Vegas Tribe of Paiute Indians of the Las Vegas Indian Colony, Moapa Band of Paiute Indians of the Moapa River Reservation, Navajo Nation, Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, Southern Ute Indian Tribe of the Southern Ute Reservation, Ute Indian Tribe of Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, White Mesa Ute, and Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Reservation.“
Joining the roster of the National Park Service in 1929 as a National Monument, Arches National Park became a National Park in 1971. It is home to hundreds of pinnacles, massive rock fins, and over 2,000 of the natural sandstone arches after which the park is named.
The park is host to several hikes, ranging from a few yards to 7 miles in length. Many of these trails lead to stunning views of these formations that make the park so special. Hikes such as Delicate Arch trail, Double Arches Trail and Park Avenue trail are all named after the formations that lie at their termini.
The park also offers camping and, of course, contains a visitor’s center with a gift shop and an information center where visitors can learn even more about the park.
Timed Entry at Arches
With Labor Day approaching and the promise of a very busy park to contend with, it took some strategic planning to get us into the park with minimal hassle.
Arches instituted a pilot program requiring the purchase of a timed entry ticket during the peak summer season. My logic was, if we go on later in the day on Monday, the day of the actual holiday, I suspected the crowds would have diminished. I logged on to the NPS website and selected the day and was presented with the options for times to enter. Every hour-long block until 1:00 pm was sold out, then every block after 1:00 had hundreds of slots available.
OK, the decision has been made for us then. I selected an entry between 1:00 and 2:00 and paid the $2 fee.
Departure and Moab
The morning of, we decided to depart early enough for us to have a little time to explore Moab before heading in to the park. We left a little after 9:00 am and took Interstate 70 out of Colorado and into Utah. The scenery slowly started to take on the reddish hue that the Utah desert is so famous for. The surrounding cliffs and buttes changed and before you knew it, we were deep in the canyons of shockingly red cliffs as the interstate dumped us just outside of Moab.
As we headed south on highway 191, we noted the absolute parade of RVs and cars heading back north toward the freeway. This only solidified my logic- most people that took the trip for the holiday weekend would wrap that weekend up by checking out of their accommodations on Monday morning to return to work the next day.
Eventually, we passed the turn-off from the highway to the park and noticed a small handful of cars at the park sign, but not too much, and ZERO line leading to the booth to get in.
As we were still a few hours early, we passed the entrance to the park and headed into Moab. We cruised the length of their main street to evaluate the parking situation and decided to park just off the main drag on Center Street.
We walked out to Main Street and headed up and down the road, stopping in at a couple of stores, looking at magnets, stickers and shirts to add to our rapidly growing collection of tchotchkes. Right around 11:00, we decided to find a place to stop and eat and settled on Zax Restaurant and Watering Hole for a pizza.
We each ordered a personal sized pizza, Brandy getting the Nothin’ But Meat and me getting the BBQ Chicken.
We ate what we could, which, after tackling an order of truffle fries, wasn’t much. We boxed up our leftovers and headed to a couple of thrift stores, walking out with no new purchases, then we headed off to the park.
Arches
We headed back up and out of Moab to the entrance to Arches National Park. Right inside the turnoff into the park is the big sign where everyone stops to take their pictures and, sure enough, there were plenty of people there. Most of them were lined up to make sure they got themselves into the picture but we never do that. We usually just stand off to the side, wait for a break in people, snap a pic of the empty sign and head off, which is exactly what we did this time.
We hopped back into Clyde and made our way up the long road leading to the ranger’s station. Along the way, there were large, orange, fabric road construction-style signs announcing, “One hour from this point”. I was astounded to see that, an hour’s wait from the sign was not that far from the station. If it took an hour to go the, say, quarter mile to the station, I could see why they wanted timed entry into the park.
I guess we picked the right time to go because we just drove up to the ranger station. Granted, we were a little early for our entry time, but it was only by three minutes. When I warned the ranger of this, he said, “I can work with three minutes.” He scanned our timed entry ticket, checked my America the Beautiful pass against by drivers license and before you knew it, we were at the visitor’s center.
In a bit of turn of events, we actually stopped in and took in the park’s movie where we learned how the spires, hoodoos and arches are formed by millions of years of erosion. The film also reminded us of the fragility of life in telling us that the arches that we would go on to see, and have been around for thousands of years, would eventually tumble, but that new arches would eventually be carved out of the sandstone cliffs.
After the film, we browsed the gift shop, made a few purchases and made our way back out and on to the scenic drive through the park.
Scenic Drive
The Arches Scenic Drive is a 36 mile round trip road that traverses the majority of the high points of the park. Including stops at some of the major sights, including Park Avenue, Balanced Rock, Double Arches, and the famous Delicate Arch (the arch featured on the Utah license plates), the drive could take as long as half a day if the visitors wanted to stop at every stop, walk or hike out to the formations, and take in all the sights along the way.
As Ash was home alone, and an hour and a half drive back looming in front of us, we needed to kind of hurry a little bit, so we only stopped at some of the high points. Hikes were not in the cards for Brandy this day as it wound up topping out at 96° by midday. I was adventurous though and would hop out at every stop and walk at least a little to the features.
Mostly, I stayed close to the truck running in the parking area with the AC on blast for Brandy, except when we got to the Windows and Double Arches stops. There, I did hike up and out to at least closer to the formations, especially Double Arches. These stops were much more crowded that those leading up to them, or perhaps, it only seemed like it because I actually left the parking areas to get to them, and was slightly dismayed at the fact that there are so many people in the photos I took. The good part is, though, that these formations are so massive that the people in the pictures are barely noticeable. I showed a few people the pics I took and none saw the other visitors as they were dwarfed by the arches.
Before long, Brandy caught a glimpse of our fuel gauge. She pointed out that we were much lower on gas than I thought we were. Leaving the truck running at each of our stops was taking its toll and we were getting pretty close to me being worried. My stops became much shorter once this was made evident to me- I did not want to run out of gas in the middle of nowhere so many of the stops we made, I would hop out of the truck, snap a few pics and vids, and would be back in the truck in less than a minute.
This desert landscape is exactly what I was after when initially planning this trip way back in 2021 (even though Arches wasn’t on the list of parks to visit). It was very satisfying, seeing the blinding red rocks, and their gradual fading to lighter hues of red, then to orange, then to tan. By the time we reached our last stop, Delicate Arch Viewpoint, the rocks were largely bleached white.
As we continued on, our dwindling fuel supply coupled with the amount of time we’d been away from Ash led us to make our stop at the Delicate Arch Viewpoint our last stop for the day. About 2/3 of the way up the scenic drive is a long spur road that leads out to the overlooks. I did notice on the map that long before reaching the overlooks, we would pass a trailhead where visitors could hike out to the arch. It looked like a pretty lengthy hike so we passed that trailhead and wound up at a looped parking lot with a short path leading to the “Lower Delicate Arch Viewpoint.” I parked and hastily made my way out to the viewpoint and… was utterly disappointed. The famous arch was SO far away from the viewpoint, it barely registered that’s what I was looking at.
I decided to see if the view from the “Upper Delicate Arch Viewpoint” was any better so I swung around the corner and saw how long just part of the hike was and decided against it. It looked like this was going to be the best view I would get of this famous arch.
Jackass Joe’s and the Return Home
After our stop at the Delicate Arch viewpoint, we quickly made our way back down the scenic drive to the visitor’s center for a last quick stop. I had a signal, finally, so I looked up the closest gas station and found that the station I had spied as we exited Interstate 70 would be the closest, and that was fewer than 30 miles from the visitor’s center. With Clyde reporting that we still had about 80 miles’ worth of gas left, even if that was a high estimate, we’d make it with no issues. This would also save us a backtracking trip back into Moab to refuel.
We left the park and made the 27 mile journey up to Jackass Joe’s, a quirky gas station painted a bright, neon green with plenty of UFO-themed decoration. It’s a small gas station with four pumps, one of which is inaccessible due to a “decorative” vehicle permanently parked in the spot. This vehicle was painted to resemble the ship from the Matt Groening series Futurama. Also on premises was a car painted to look like Lightning McQueen from the Pixar movie Cars, and a van painted to look like Scooby Doo & Gang’s ride, the Mystery Machine.
I started the gas pump ($6.00 a gallon for premium!) then we walked into the sprawling convenience store and were greeted with more decoration like what we saw outside. There were cardboard standees and posters and props and stuff everywhere.
There were walls and walls just full of all kinds of different flavors of beef jerky and they had sections of international snacks, like, Lays potato chips and such from other countries, as well as an international candies section.
They, of course, had plenty of Jackass Joe’s souvenirs like t-shirts and shotglasses and such so of course, we picked up a few trinkets, checked out, then went back out to the pump where it had stopped at $75 and would not go any further. I reset the handle, hopped in and was not surprised to see that $75 had only given us half a tank. It’d be enough to get us back to Fruita, that’s all I cared about anyway.
We got back to the AirBnB and walked in to Ash, super excited that we’d returned home after a long day away. He was good though, nothing was out of place. He likely slept most of the time anyway.
Conclusion
Was Arches National Park all if cracked up to be? Absolutely. The desert landscape, the colors, and even the hot day we elected to visit all hit the high marks for me. I’m a bit sad that we did have to cut our trip short, but was super, SUPER happy with what I did see, so I, at least, don’t feel cheated by the visit.
I would LOVE to visit again when it’s a little cooler and see more of what I missed this time around.
Pictures from the entire day’s adventures are in the ol’ Photo Diary, make sure you check those out, make sure you read about the rest of our stay in Fruita, and read on about the next stops on this summer’s tour!
-Phil