10 years ago I left Las Vegas for PA. On the road trip east, I had to shave down my sight seeing so I could get to PA on time before grad classes began. One of the sights I cut out was Arches National Park. It isn't particularly close to anything and requires intention to go. The closest major city is SLC at 3.5 hours. I knew this would be a hard sight to see, but I have wanted to see it since living in Vegas so naturally this adventure had to include this.
The park itself isn't very big. A day in the park would be sufficient. I had mapped out what I wanted to do. Much like Yellowstone, some of the coolest parts of the park have been made easily accessible. I planned for a few longer hikes, but many of the sights I saw were less than a mile round trip from the car. It is also a pretty uncrowded park, I had no issues parking at any of the places I wanted to check out.
During one of my short out and backs, I recognized a storm cloud but thought the arch was close enough that I could make it to the arch and back to my car. Boy was I wrong. I was soaked by the time I got back to my car. The temperature had dropped nearly 20 degrees when the rain came as well. I knew the rain storm would be over soon, as rainstorms out here are not generally all day affairs like they are back east. I spent the next hour trying to warm my cold wet body from the nice dry car. Eventually the rain stopped and the sun reemerged, soon it looked like it never had rained in the first place.
The arches are beautiful, an interesting phenomena caused by erosion over centuries. The park boasts 2,000 arches, I maybe only saw about 15-20. They are scattered all over, most of them are hidden from the park road. Though there are other arches all over the world, the particular sandstone that is in this area of the country is more prone to erosion and therefore the arches. It really is like nowhere else and it was totally worth the visit.
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