And Feather Canyons Everywhere – West Trip Part Five – Arches National Park
I settled in on the night of June 30 with a rough idea of where we would go the next day at Arches, but decided to do some google searching to make sure I had a decent mental image of the map, the scale, and the attainable hikes we could cover the next day. WHICH IS A MIRACLE because Arches has just started a pilot “timed entry” program to cut down on crowding, and starting in April 2022 one cannot enter Arches without a ticket! On top of the admission ticket, you need a timed entry ticket that has one hour in which you may enter the park, or you ain’t getting in. Once you’re in, you’re in – you can stay as long as you like and leave any time. It is not expensive ($25 maybe?), and is a great system frankly – in the run-up to our trip I read countless reviews about how crowded and miserable it was, and how you can never find parking at any of the trailheads. We had no such problems and thus I am a fan of this timed entry, to be clear, but also we were quite lucky that we were going on the Friday before July 4 weekend and not the Saturday/Sunday/Monday, because all timed tickets were fully sold out for the latter three as I learned during my puzzled-turned-frantic googling the night before. By some miracle they had a few left for that Friday, July 1. In fact, I put a 10:00 am-11:00 am entry ticket in my shopping cart and it sold out from under me before I could buy it, so I had to settle for an 11:00 am entry time.
So. We had one day at Arches, and it could not begin until 11:00 am. I did not want the boys to waste the morning on screens, so during breakfast I asked the motel desk employee about suggestions of a quick morning jaunt we could make. She eyeballed my boys’ ages and then recommended the Moab Rock Shop just down the road.
I am convinced they pay her a referral fee, because I spent unfathomable sums on rocks. Just a really shocking price tag for rocks that were mostly about 50 cents each. Craig kept enthusiastically cradling and cooing over different rocks and tossing fistfuls in his little basket. I told each boy I would pay $20 per kid to buy them a souvenir, and anything additional had to come from their allowance. Liam immediately selected a heavy smooth carved stone that was $19.99 and collected nothing further . . . Craig, meanwhile, spent about $40 of his allowance money in addition to the $20 and I even forgave him a few extra bucks. He went NUTS in this place. (I did too, admittedly – bought some Christmas presents for nieces and nephews.)
The Moab Rock Shop, a family-owned shop picking tourists’ pockets since 1960, enticed us in with offers of free dinosaur bones, and held us hostage with its piles of other treasures. We saw giant bins and drawers and shelves full of sandstone and onyx and quartz; geodes and jade and fossil teeth; petrified wood, meteorites, and little carved stone animals. We probably spent two hours pawing through giant troughs and shelves and drawers. We were three discerning gemologists making calculated decisions about color, clarity, cut and carat by palming and polishing and examining each treasure. It was highly ridiculous and so, so satisfying, and at 10:45 I exclaimed in shock at the time and hustled the boys through the line and back to the motel so we could get to the national park that we’d actually come to see. That timed entry ticket probably saved me a hundred bucks – in fact, we might be still there to this day if I hadn’t been forced to leave. But I’m so glad we did leave . . .
It was 84° and overcast at first, a perfect day for hiking, though the sun did come out later in the day. We waited about 40 minutes in line to get in, even with the timed entry pass. A couple of cars in front of us turned around and bailed, but we waited patiently, listening to our Magnus Chase book and nervously eyeballing the clock to make sure we got through the line before noon (when our timed entry expired).
After we made it past the entry gate (a friendly forest ranger sold me the Southwest Utah Parks Pass), we drove about 10 miles an hour up a very steep set of switchbacks over a pass. I was overwhelmed by the view, and asked the boys to take pictures and videos as we went. All of the formations are amazing – my sons’ instincts for photography are not.
I had plans for where to go, but ended up stopping at the first trail head we came to at the boys’ awed insistence. I snapped a photo of the two boys at “Park Avenue,” so named because the rock formations look like skyscrapers.
The Park Avenue trail is not the most famous or populated trail at Arches, but the boys were completely jazzed about getting out and walking it. So I parked, let them run ahead along the trail while I fished out our backpack/first aid kit/waters, and then jogged to catch up to them.
The trail winds through the canyon to the Courthouse Towers parking lot about a mile down. We walked it there and back in about 1.5 hours, with frequent detours in nooks and crannies and side trails. I was mildly concerned that the boys would wear themselves out with their absolutely charming enthusiastic delight, but also thought that there is no better way to kill a love of the outdoors than by sniping nitpicky instructions to “calm down” and “watch your step.” They were agog – as was I – and I gave them the gift of just free rein to respectfully run and jump and enjoy. There were few others there, they didn’t go off trail – our boys are conscientious and pretty good at Leave No Trace already. They ran and jumped and knelt and scientifically pondered, and gently poked and puzzled and hypothesized, all under my benevolent eye.
It is hard to describe how amazing it was to be inside of a canyon like this one. Rock formations everywhere, everything orange or red or some shade in between, the evidence of rock layers and enormous pressure and erosion and relentless time . . . This sky was blue off in the distance, dotted with pure white clouds, but overhead the clouds were gray. They did not look heavy enough for it to rain – just thick enough to protect us from sunburn, keep things cool. The boys scampered ahead of me. There was no hurry.
As we neared the Courthouse Towers end of the trail, we came upon a Texan open carrying a handgun on his hip, which seemed a little silly to me. First of all, why could he possibly need a handgun out here? Second of all, what if he fell over in his big cowboy boots? There are lots of rocks and steps, he could have fallen and discharged his gun. I sighed at the foolish aggressive “masculinity” some men insist upon, but we kept our distance and he and his lady friend eventually clambered into their giant truck with Texas plates and left.
We climbed up to the road, crossed it, and found ourselves in the Courthouse Towers parking lot. Courthouse Towers was an incredible series of spires that stretches 4,800 feet up from the dessert floor, including Baby Arch, Three Gossips, Ring Arch and the Tower of Babel. We saw them from a distance, as we had a full mile to walk uphill to return to our car. The blue sky and clouds continued to amaze.
After a guzzle of water and a snack, we turned and walked back up the Park Avenue Trail back to our car. The return was uphill, making it a little tougher than walking down was, but we saw more amazing views and I found it wonderful to stretch our legs after 10 or 11 hours in the car the previous day. The boys did start to weary by the end, but they were troopers and kept on pushing til we got up the steep set of steps and back to our car. We saw lots of tadpole shrimp on the way up – apparently they can lay dormant as cysts, all dried up and dehydrated in small potholes in the canyon for up to fifty years and yet remain alive, then get reconstituted and revived when it rains. Craig was fascinated.
Once we arrived at the car, we climbed in and headed back up toward the Windows section of the park. We stopped a few times on the way, and I took pictures at a few overlooks.
On the way, we passed by Balance Rock and I could not skip it. We parked nearby and hopped out of the car again. Liam was feeling a little tired and tweeny, so he stayed at the bottom of the trial and Craig and I hiked the 20 yards or so up to the base of Balance Rock and took lots of pictures.
Balance Rock was a short walk, so we had plenty of time and energy left for the Windows/ Turret Rock, which is the most popular area of Arches National Park and the spot I most wanted to see. The Windows trail is one mile round trip – only a moderate slope. The North Window and South Window are connected to each other – from the parking lot, the North Window is to the left and the South to the right. Opposite them is Turret Rock – another impressive, sprawling formation that is easily accessible.The sun did come out while we were at Windows and it started to get a little hot, though we were careful to guzzle water.
Visitors can walk right up to the North Window along a path. The boys ran ahead, and I marched slow and steady behind. As you can see from the pictures below, there were many people there along with us, clambering up at the arch and looking through the “window.” When I got to the base, the boys had crawled up some ways. I hiked up to join them, and realized the two little boys were, like, inches from a sheer drop off. There was another mother there who was anxiously encouraging them to step back from the edge in a high wheedling voice. I got there and some sort of instinct took over and without much self control I yanked them both down away from the edge. Thus endeth my chill for the remainder of the trip – having realized I could not trust their natural self-preservation to keep them from making poor choices, I never again fully relaxed in Arches, or at any other place with cliffs.
After North Window, we hiked around a knob of sandstone to see South Window. The South Window is not accessible, so you have to look from a distance – fine by me after the heart-stopping North Window cliff’s edge experience.
Clockwise from top left – checking out the trail signage – walking toward North Window, close to North Window, under North Window. Vie of North and South Windows from Turret Rock (across the desert some ways) – and the two boys in front of South Window, about as close as it is possible to get.
The Windows and Turret Rock are all on the one mile loop trail, so we headed to Turret Rock next. My lithe, light boys (Liam is 5’7″ and 120 pounds, Craiggy is 5′ and 80 pounds) bounded up a small sandstone mound to get to Turret Rock. Having remembered my lessons of the North Window, I leapt up after them and nearly fell over from a back spasm. I was regretting not putting them on a leash for this trip.
(Above is turret rock – walking towards it with the Windows formations to our back, and then taking a pic from the other side.
The Windows/Turret area has a connected upper and lower parking lot – the lower parking lot also serves Double Arch, down hill and perhaps a mile away. At this point we were pretty exhausted, but also too close to Double Arch to skip it, so we staggered over to the formation (which, as its name suggests, is a double arch!) I vividly recall that the sun was out full blast for this hike, and we were getting quite hot at this point. But even the two boys wanted to make the effort, so we marched along the exposed sandy path and clambered up the base of the arch formation, then lay ourselves in the shade of the formations and watched the scudding clouds hustle along past the arches overhead.
After the hike to Double Arch, we were fully cooked. Delicate Arch is a quite famous formation, so I headed to the trailhead – but we took a picture from a distance, and did not walk a single step more. It was time to head home.
We went to Moab’s grocery, City Market, for a few provisions including Healthy Choice microwave dinners. I made the boys rinse the dirt off in the shower, and then they swam in the pool for an hour while I sat in an Adirondack chair and read a book. They bathed again, got ready for bed, we ate our Healthy Choice and then they played some ping pong and video games in the motel’s former garage.
While they played, I noted aloud that we had walked 7.88 miles that day. This launched a series of questions from Craig:
- ‘How much is that in millimeters?’
- ‘How old are you in seconds, mom?’
- ‘How quick is your reaction time?’ Me: ‘Why?’ *ducks*
- ‘Look – I have a red sour patch kid and a blue sour patch kid. Now I just need a white to be red white and blue. Wait, there’s white on the bag! So I have red white and blue! That’s America! Wonder what America tastes like. What do you think America tastes like mom?’ Me: ‘Uh, sour cuz it’s sour patch kids.’ Craig: ‘But like do you think it’s really sour or just a little sour or like fruity or what?’
- Craig, from the top bunk: *dangles a foot over the side* ‘does this make you anxious?’ *moves an inch* ‘How bout now?’ *move another inch* ‘you nervous now mom?’ Repeat again and again.
Finally, the boys went to sleep. The next day we would see more of Utah’s national parks, and then head to Sedona, Arizona for a few nights. Sleep was on the menu!