Arches and Canyonland National Park, Moab, Utah

November 12-14, 2020

Have you ever seen a Utah license plate? If you have, you would have seen an arch on the tag. If you have never seen the tag, google it or pay attention next time when traveling. That arch you see on their tag is called Delicate Arch, and it is located in Arches National Park in Moab Utah. Let me just say, the arch on the tag does absolutely no justice to the real arch. The real thing is stunning and very impressive in size. I was expecting to see this small nature made stone arch. Not the case, the Delicate Arch is 46 feet tall and 32 feet wide (according to the National Park Service). We hiked to the arch at the end of the day to view it while the sun was setting because we had heard how beautiful that is. We were not disappointed with the view and hiking back down the trail in the dark was fun too. If you look real close in one of our pictures (or zoom in) you can see me and the girls standing under the arch.

Arches NP has 2500 natural sandstone arches. Besides the popular Delicate Arch we enjoyed seeing Skyline Arch, Broken Arch, Sand Dune Arch, Double Arch, North and South Window and many, many more. Then there was just an abundance of unusual rock formations. Some have been given names like Balanced Rock, Three Gossips, Elephant Butte and Parade of Elephants. Then there were the ones without names that Gregory, the girls and I had fun with. Think about that cloud game I know you have played where you look up in the sky and say what certain clouds look like. Same thing but will rock formations.

Canyonland was well, a lot of canyons. To us it looked like a smaller version of the Grand Canyon. We drove the Island in the Sky, which is the main road going through the park. Along this road there is beautiful scenery and overlooks as well as trailheads. At the end we hiked Grand View Point that provided us with incredible, panoramic views of Canyonland. We didn’t spend much time in this park but it is a park I would like to go back to and explore more. Next time I want to have a mountain bike with me. This park would be great for exploring via mountain bike.