We had been warned by our friends from Albuquerque that we should arrive early at Arches National Park and drive all the way in to the farthest parking area. If we were early, we might get a parking space and enjoy hiking before it became too crowded. That was our plan.
On our first full day we were in Moab we had decide to rest. However scanning the weather forecast we realized that we would only have a couple of nice days before it would get rainy and cool. After lunch we headed to Arches National Park.
We took the right off of US-191 for Arches and got in line to enter the park. I chose the line with a number RVs. I hoped that all of those RVers had Senior National Park Passes and they would zip through the entrance booth. It took us over 20 minutes to get up to the entrance. But we beat the other line that had mostly cars by many car lengths.
We headed to The Windows and managed to “make” a parking spot on the side of the road. From here we walked to Double Arch, North Window, South Window and Turret Arch.
Mrs Ram noticed an elephants face and trunk near the Double Arch.
On the next day we followed our friends advice getting there early, breezing through the entrance in under 10 minutes and getting an actual parking space at Devil’s Garden Trailhead. We hiked out to Landscape Arch which looked quite delicate to us.
In 1991 a large section had fallen off barely missing hikers that had been sitting underneath it.
The weather turned rainy and we waited a few days hoping it would improve. It didn’t. We moved on leaving Delicate Arch and some off park arches such as Longbow, Corona and Bowtie for another visit.