Visiting Arches National Park Near Moab, UT

We decided to do Arches a little differently to Canyonlands. We’d brought our dog Truffles along with us to Canyonlands which isn’t particularly dog-friendly, so at each overlook Shae and I stayed with her while my parents went to check out the views, then they’d come back to be with Truffles and we’d go to the overlook.

Arches is even less pet-friendly because to see any of the arches, you usually have to walk along longer trails and dogs aren’t allowed on those. That meant if we took it in turns to see the different arches, we’d be there forever.

As a result, we left Truffles back at the Airbnb and just the four of us headed to Arches National Park.

We’d thankfully seen ahead of time that Arches was requiring timed tickets for entry, so we got our tickets ahead of time (you can get yours here). That meant that even though there was a short line to get into the park, it didn’t take long before we were able to get in.

Timed tickets only cost $2 and are on top of the regular entrance fee. Entrance fees are $30 for private vehicles, $25 for motorcycles and $15 for people on foot or bicycle, with those entry tickets being valid for seven days from date of purchase. If you have an annual National Parks pass like we have, you don’t have to pay the entry fee – only the $2 for a timed ticket.

Our first stop once we were in the park was the visitor center. This is worth visiting before seeing the rest of the park because there’s a lot of information about the rock formations, how the arches were formed, etc.

After spending a bit of time learning about the park, we hopped back in the car and started driving along the main road through the park.

Our first stop was the Delicate Arch trailhead. There are a couple of viewpoints to see Delicate Arch from a distance, but we wanted to hike up to the arch itself. It’s only a three mile round trip hike and is well worth doing – read more about our hike here.

It was almost 3pm by the time we finished the hike, so we found a picnic table to have some lunch. We then got back on the road to explore the park. There are lots of interesting rock formations you’ll see when driving through Arches National Park, like these fin formations that were near Sand Dune Arch.

There are more than 2,000 arches in Arches National Park, so we knew we were only going to see a tiny fraction of them. Most arches can only be seen by taking trails, but occasionally you’ll be able to see one while driving along.

It’s not only arches you’ll see in the park though. For example, there’s a section of the park called Fiery Furnace, named that way due to the glow on the rocks in the afternoon. Fiery Furnace is a series of thin canyons that you can hike through. However, you have to either get a hiking permit ($10) or you can take a ranger-led tour ($16) to explore them.

Delicate Arch is the most iconic arch in Arches National Park, but there are some other impressive arches. One of the most impressive arches is actually a pair of arches – Double Arch.

One of the fun things about Double Arch is that you can climb up inside the arch area. I had flip-flops on by this point, so I kicked those off and explored barefoot seeing as it was smooth slickrock.

I’m glad I clambered up to the far end of the Double Arch because looking back out through the front arch provided an excellent vista.

After checking out Double Arch, we stayed parked in the same spot and walked up the nearby Windows trails to see some more arches/windows.

The first one we saw on the trail was North Window Arch.

We then continued along the trail towards Turret Arch.

That trail also leads you past South Window Arch.

We continued walking up towards Turret Arch which featured both an arch and a small window to the left of it.

In front of Turret Arch on the right was a set of rocks that wasn’t too hard to scale. I decided to clamber up to get a better view of the North and South Window Arches back across the way.

There were still lots of notable arches we’d not had a chance to see, but it was 5:30pm by this point and, with a 1.5 hour drive back to our Airbnb in Monticello where our pup was patiently waiting, we decided it was time to head back.

We made a very quick stop along the way though to grab a quick photo of Balanced Rock which is named for obvious reasons.

Final Thoughts

Despite being a fairly small park, Arches National Park has a lot to see. We didn’t get to explore as much as would have been ideal because we had a 1-1.5 hour drive each way from our Airbnb in Monticello, but if you stay in Moab then you’ll be much closer to the park and so will have more time to explore. One day at Arches National Park will be enough for some people, but you could easily spend at least a couple of days there to walk/hike as many trails as possible in order to see more arches than we got to see.