Arches National Park

Apr 5, 2025

Not much in Green River to tickle the taste buds, so we ended up at the local servo at breakfast time to fill the car and get our morning coffee.

It was our day to explore Arches National Park, but the far more pressing need was good coffee and something decent to eat. We certainly found that at a wonderful bakery in Moab near the park entrance, but I’ve never paid $60 for two coffees and two cakes in my life before. Everything around the national park is incredibly expensive with hotel rooms in the range of $500–$600 per night, which might explain why we are in a cruddy Super Six way down the road.

The Colorado River is over 2000 km long and flows through seven US states and 11 US national parks, the best known of which is the Grand Canyon. One of the parks that the river flows through is the Arches National Park, but it wasn’t always a river. Once this area, known as the Colorado plateau, was under the sea and as it dried up it left the Colorado River and a huge salt bed. Salt under pressure is unstable, and over time the salt shifted and buckled, rising above the surface in some places to form arches, spires, and lots of balancing rocks.

We drove down beside the Colorado River for some distance admiring the rock formations, and came across a section of sheer cliffs where you could just rock up with your climbing gear, drive your pitons into the rock, and see how far you could climb. There were even rock climbing ambassadors located along the road to point you to the best places, and a pop-up coffee shop for when you wanted to embellish your exploits afterwards.

There are over 2000 catalogued arches in the park, all of which must have at least a 3 foot opening to be considered an arch. We saw numbers of them today, but the most famous one and the target for most of the tourists is the iconic Delicate Arch.

The park is so popular that you actually pre-purchase a timed ticket to enter, and our time was noon. At that time we joined a queue about 50 other cars presumably with 12 o’clock tickets, and inched our way through the gate, paying for a pass as we went.

We started by driving straight to the Delicate Arch at the other end of the park as it is extremely popular and a parking spot is not guaranteed, so you might spend a while waiting before you can hit the trail. We were lucky to have somebody pulling out as we arrived, so we donned our jackets and backpacks and headed off up the trail.

Delicate Arch is a 16 m tall freestanding arch, depicted on their license plates, and, in a typical display of kitch, the Olympic torch passed through the arch in 2002 when they held the Olympics here. It’s a 5 km walk to the arch and back, mainly uphill one way and (therefore) downhill the other, sometimes clambering over open rock, and traversing a narrow ledge that freaks some people. However, when you get there the view is amazing.

We didn’t join the queue to get the Insta-worthy selfie standing under the arch, but we did have to patiently wait our turn to get some good photos.

Finally back at the car we headed off towards the Devil’s Garden area where we enjoyed our lunch while admiring the view. Late afternoon saw us head back towards the entrance station stopping at various viewpoints and arches on the way.

Went back into Moab for an early tea as our cruddy hotel has almost no eating options nearby. The Big Mac index is AU$16 so, yes, everything is expensive.