Arches National Park is home to over 2,000 arches as well as a myriad of other astounding feats of nature. Conveniently placed near Moab, outdoor enthusiasts of all backgrounds find themselves drawn to explore the curious rock formations. Whether you’re planning an Arches-only trip or hitting up all the parks in Utah, you won’t regret adventuring to Moab and discovering the wild west that Arches showcases with such grandeur. One day in Arches will leave you in awe of all there is to see and humbled by the enchanting wilderness.
Not only are the various arrays of arches just incredible to see and stand under, but the views from the park, with the La Sal mountains in the backdrop, are astounding as well. Arches National Park is an incredible testament to the power and simple beauty of nature.
Fast Facts About Arches National Park
Size: 76,519 acres
Visitors: 1,806,865 (data from 2021)
Highest elevation: 5,653 feet at Elephant Butte
Distance from Moab: 13 miles — 20 minutes
Distance from Salt Lake City Airport: 240 miles — 4 hour drive
National Park Initiation: November 12th, 1971
Arches is minutes away from Moab— an outdoor recreation mecca, known for zealous exploration adventures. It would be easy to spend a week in Moab, immersing yourself in the unique topography of the nearby state and national parks. That being said, not every trip gets to be as endlessly long as we’d like. It’s definitely possible to see the top highlights of Arches in a day!
We tend to enjoy an action-packed day, so the ideal itinerary might vary from person to person. Fitness level and time of year are going to be factors that dictate just how long you should allot for this fantastic park. Below we have detailed how to ensure you are allowed into the park, our favorite hikes, the best spots to stargaze, and the scoop on camping in the park— as well as a handful of tips and tricks to ensure you have the best time.
Securing Your Timed Entry
Where to start? Let’s make sure you make it in the door! From 2009 to 2019, visitation to Arches grew over 66 percent, with most people arriving during the same peak hours each day. Due to this influx, the park has integrated an initiative to spread arrivals out— from 7am to 4pm. This timed entry is in effect April 1 through July 6 and August 28 through October 31, 2025. The aim of the timed entry program is not to reduce the quantity of individuals visiting the park but to more evenly disperse their arrival throughout the day.
What exactly does timed entry mean? Prospective park visitors can reserve a 1 hour slot in which they will enter the park. It is important to arrive at the park within your window otherwise your entry may be denied. Taking a last minute trip and worried you won’t be able to get in? Additional tickets are made available at 6pm MDT/MST the calendar day prior. If you are having technical difficulties and are unable to secure any timed entry tickets, your other option would be arriving at the park before 6am or after 5pm.
This differs from the $30/vehicle entrance fee everyone pays for admission into the park. The entry fee is enforced year-round as it’s important for preserving and maintaining the park. The timed entry reservation system is completely different! Its sole purpose being to control the influx of people into the park. This is an online reservation system, so there is a $2 fee. You can make your ticketed entry reservations here.
Individuals with camping, backcountry, Fiery Furnace, or special use permits do NOT need to secure a timed entry reservation. Nor do those with concessions contracts, commercial use authorizations, or academic fee waivers. Tribal visits are also exempt.
Pack a Snack
There is no lodge or restaurant in Arches, so be sure to bring along all the snacks and meals you might need. Arches’ close proximity to Moab makes tracking down sustenance easy. Grocery stores like City Market are the perfect way to make sure you have everything you need before embarking on your adventure. When you’re done exploring, nothing hits the spot like a cold treat on a hot day. There’s a handful of tasty-looking shops, but we had the best post-hike treat at Moab Frozen Yogurt— a delightful little dessert desert oasis!
Catch Some Zzzzz’s
How to make the most of your day? Start by already being in the park! There’s no lodge in Arches, so if you want to sleep in Arches, you better pack your camping gear! Devils Garden Campground is the only campground in Arches National Park. As such, its busy season is quite busy, and the 51 campsites go like hotcakes. Campsites can be reserved up to six month in advance between March 1 and October 31. In the low season, campsites are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. As a bonus— when you have a camping reservation for a given night, you do NOT have to worry about securing a timed entry pass for the day!
If you’re not much for camping, there are loads of different hotel accommodations in Moab— which could not be a more convenient location for accessing Arches.
As a note: Campsites go like HOTCAKES!!! Campgrounds will be fully booked up weeks (if not months) in advance, but there’s hope for last minute campers. Campflare is an app that will let you know when a campsite in a given campground becomes available. Be prepared to act fast though because things do not stay vacant long!
◁ ・An Action-Packed Day ・▷
With over 2,000 natural sandstone arches and dramatically memorable vistas, one day at Arches will be full of adventure and breathtaking scenery. The park’s compact size and efficient road system makes it easy to navigate between trailheads and viewpoints. Get ready to start your day early and stay up late… the star gazing in Arches is almost as outstanding as the other-worldly landscape.
Delicate Arch
The Delicate Arch hike is arguably one of the most popular hikes in the park, but for good reason. While the park is home to a myriad of arches, Delicate Arch is massively impressive and the La Sal Mountains in the backdrop make it beyond picturesque. My favorite moment in the park was standing under Delicate Arch, looking out at the mountains. The arch is larger than you might initially assume— you can hardly notice me underneath! If you only have time for one hike, this should be it.
Getting an early start on the day helps to avoid some of the trail congestion and gobs of people at the viewpoint.
Length: 3.2 miles
Elevation gain: 629ft
Fiery Furnace Viewpoint
This viewpoint gets its name as end-of0the-day, low-angle sunset light gives the rock face a furnace-like glow. Even in the bright light of morning, the natural labyrinth of sandstone walls and eroded passages makes for a unique view. It’s a peaceful spot to eat a snack, give your legs a break, and just take in nature’s beauty.
If you plan to spend a couple days in the park, you can actually hike through the Fiery Furnace, either on a ranger-led tour or with a special use permit.
Devil’s Garden Hike
The Devil’s Garden trail or Double O Trail is quite the multi-destination hike as it leads to an array of different arches. These paths both go all the way down to the Double O Arch, passing by the Dark Arch, Landscape Arch, and Navajo Arch along the way. The viewpoints and arches were certainly beautiful, but this hike was worth doing just for the views of the horizon. There’s also some fun climbing and scrambling to be had as well.
Taking the most direct route out and back to the Double O Arch is 4.2 miles, but the full Devil’s Garden trail loop takes you through new terrain on the way back and clocks in at just under 8 miles. If you only have one day in the park, we recommend the more direct out and back path. The longer loop is certainly picturesque, but you get the general ambiance and scenery in the shorter out and back version. Depending on time of year, this also helps attenuate excess time out in the sun on an exposed trail. Very little sacrifice, while helping make the most of your day!
Length: 4.2+ miles
Elevation gain: 682+ ft
It cannot be said enough, be sure you pack yourself enough water. Due to the long, unshaded nature of this trail, going earlier in the day is especially advisable, but if you are hiking in the afternoon, ensure you are prepared.
Panorama Point
Panorama Point is another fabulous viewpoint. If you waited until after your second hike to enjoy a late lunch, this is the perfect spot for it! A sandwich almost assuredly tastes better when it’s being enjoyed in the midst of a 360-degree sweeping view. One of the best spots to take in the park and surrounding high desert grandeur.
Visitor center
The Visitor Center is located right by the entrance to the park. Depending on when you arrive, it may not be open yet, but it’s worth stopping by before you leave. Whether you’re looking to get your passport book stamped, checking out swag in the bookstore, or hunting down a park ranger to learn exactly how an arch comes to be, the visitor center has a little something for everyone.
Out & Back
A full day in the park can be skewed according to the time of year you visit. The late spring, summer, and early fall months are the months of highest visitation but this is usually accompanied by warm temperatures during the day. If you aim for an early start and you are likely to be done with most of the above itinerary between 2-4pm. That will give you the opportunity to go rise off, rest for a bit, grab dinner, and make it back to see the stars.
star light, star bright
On a clear night, you can see the stars almost anywhere in the park. Areas off the main road prevent the headlights or people coming and going affecting your night vision and photographs. The farther north you drive into the park, the darker the sky will be. We initially drove to the Petrified Dunes Viewpoint but found the light pollution from Moab to be disruptive, so we hopped in the car and drove a bit farther to the Balance Rock picnic area.
While these points aren’t terribly far from one another, it made a huge difference in visibility. The best spots to stargaze are at Balance Rock, just past Balance Rock at either the Windows section or the Garden of Eden, and at Panorama Point.
If you have a flashlight or headlamp with a red light setting, bring it along! White lights can be harmful to your night vision, but the red lights more gentle. This is also respectful to any photographers out trying to capture pictures of the stars. Due to the long exposure necessary to photograph the stars, extraneous white light can be disruptive. If you have any star identification apps, they may be able to help you find constellations as well as the Milky Way.
As a note, Canyonlands National Park is about 45 minutes away from Moab, and therefore the light pollution of Moab. If you are a night owl with the evening flexibility, the stars will be even more amazing at its gold-tier International Dark Sky status.
Bonus: How are Arches Made?
To be considered one of the park’s 2,000+ official stone arches, an opening of at least three feet must exist. This hole can stretch in any one direction, and there’s no requirement for width. For this reason, many of the arches in the park are so narrow, you might walk right past them as though it’s just a small hole in a stone.
The rock that makes up much of Arches is different layers of sandstone. Water takes advantage of cracks in rock surfaces and wears the sandstone down into fins. The park only receives 8-10 inches of precipitation per year. This doesn’t sound like much, but if the park were to receive too much more rain, the sandstone would potentially erode so quickly that the arches wouldn’t be able to form. The rain and snow that fall at Arches is a perfect quantity to erode the underlying rock at a sustainable pace to create the gorgeous sandstone arches.
The infographic pictures below are from the Arches Visitor Guide, which provides a more thorough explanation. If you have any additional questions about arches or any other geological features, be sure to ask a park ranger. We happened upon one whilst out on the Devils Garden trail, and found she was a wealth of information regarding various questions we had accumulated along our hike.
parting thoughts
While all national parks are home to outstanding feats of nature, Arches is perhaps the most uniquely mysterious. While science has a perfectly logical explanation as to how arches are formed, it still feels like nothing short of a miracle to stand under Delicate Arch, looking up. We hope you have a chance to make it out west and enjoy your action-packed one day in Arches National Park.
Arches is one of five national parks in Utah. If you are planning a multi-park road trip, you don’t want to miss Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, or Canyonlands!
written by Hannah
Hannah traded the warm beaches of southwest FL for the outdoor adventure locale that is Bend, OR. Despite the distance, Hannah maintains her bossy big sister role with regular phone calls to keep up with all the little sister shenanigans. Notoriously chatty with her patients as well, Hannah stays busy as a physical therapist, but loves making time to explore newfound hikes. These days she has some extra pack weight; however, Xavier is notorious for being unimpressed by sweeping vistas.
