One of the best parts of Moab, Utah was its proximity to a couple really cool parks. We hadn’t originally planned on hitting a ton of national parks on this trip – maybe four total – so when our impromptu route change brought us within striking distance of two more, we were pretty stoked. We couldn’t check in to our Airbnb in Hurricane, Utah until 4PM on Friday and it was about a 5hr drive from where we were at in Moab. We figured that we could wake up early, quickly drive through Arches, hit a state park for a hike with Dog before noon, and then see the second national park, Canyonlands, on our way out of town. Now, I’m sure that you, Reader, are doing some elementary calculations right now and can see that 2 national parks + 1 state park + 5hr drive = insanity, but we prefer to keep reality out of the conversation when planning a trip, so this all seemed very reasonable to us.

Arches National Park

Our first stop of the day was at Arches National Park, which again, we assumed we could drive through at a pretty reasonable clip and see everything we needed to see. We allotted at most one hour for this park, but figured with our level of motivation we could be in and out in 35min. The thing about Arches is that it has some short hiking trails, but is mostly a 36mi road that winds around the red rock formations that Utah is famous for, and has a bunch of lookouts where you can pull over, take a picture, and read a little bit about the geological forces at play in the area. And since we had Dog with us in the car and he was not allowed out at any of the trails, we supposed that Arches was basically the National Park Services equivalent of a drive-in movie theater.

Of course, we were wrong.

The first thing that we failed to take into account for our mad dash through Arches was the stunning beauty of the landscape. It had our jaws on the floor the whole time. It made us want to drive 15mph and take it all in. We stopped at every lookout, and took every little diversion road. The red rocks and sandstone formations were so different from what we thought of as “nature” in the Midwest that it absolutely took our breath away at every turn. Just from looking at the map, we had assumed that we could make the drive partway through the park and turn around when time got tight, just cutting the remaining formations and viewpoints from our agenda. But about one mile into the park, we knew we wouldn’t be able to do that, and we would be completing the whole route.

Second on our list of missing the obvious is that we are gigantic nerds. Have you ever been to a park and seen the little plaques with information on the native flora and fauna? Did you also see me and M elbowing school children out of the way so that we could rock-paper-scissors for who got to read the plaque aloud to the other? We live for those suckers. How did that plateau get its name? What did this spot look like 40 million years ago? What kind of rock am I standing on? How did any of this get here? What happens when it rains? Who were the first people to lay eyes on this part of the earth? We know it all because we read the plaques. The way I see it is if a 300 million year old rock wants to tell me a story, I better be educated enough to appreciate it. But that education and storytelling time came at the cost of our quick trip through the park. It was a fair trade, though, as we now know all about the lifecycle of an arch (our favorite thing that we learned), and after that lesson, we were spotting “pre-arches” and “baby arches” left, right, and center.

Lastly, it turns out we did want to get out and hike a little bit! We still had Dog in the car, but it was difficult – nay, impossible! – to turn down the opportunity to get up close and personal with the park’s namesakes. We did a couple little half mile loops and out-and-backs to some of the signature spots in the park, but we couldn’t leave the car for too long because even though it was chilly outside, it was very sunny, and we didn’t want Dog to cook in the car. We did push past our self-imposed away-from-the-car time limit at one stop when we accidentally got lost in the desert on a “primitive trail” around the back of a set of arches. A primitive trail is basically a less friendly, less well-traveled, less obvious way through the wilderness that is more immersive and exploratory. This trail was reasonably marked for about half of the way, and then we totally lost it. There seemed to be only one route we could possibly take over a rocky ledge, but there was clearly Not A Trail where we landed on the other side. We followed the sandy bootprints of some other poor lost hiker before us until we saw a low lying “Stay On Trail” sign in the scrub and picked up the main thoroughfare again. One thing to know, Reader, is that we are huge proponents of park rules – we do not stray from the path, we pack it in and pack it out, we give revegetation areas wide berths, if there is wildlife around we do not approach or agitate – so this was a pretty big blow to our sanctimonious self-bestowed titles of Not Wanderers. But we had to get back to Dog! He was fine, and the car was a comfortable temperature upon our return.

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All in, we spent 3.5hrs in Arches National Park, but we could have spent all day there if we didn’t have somewhere to be, and a pup to entertain. We would absolutely recommend it for anyone in the area, and it was particularly kid and family friendly!

Dead Horse Point State Park

After we blew through basically our entire scheduled park time at Arches, we knew we were going to have to cut a park from the itinerary. It would have been really cool to get Canyonlands in and keep racking up the national park total, but when it came right down to it, Dog made the decision for us. He wasn’t able to get out at all at Arches, and Canyonlands would be more of the same, so we opted for Dead Horse Point State Park (terrible name) which shared a border with Canyonlands and did allow four-legged adventurers on the trails.

A quick conversation with a park ranger at the visitor center led us to the East Rim Trail to Dead Horse Point. It was a 4mi walk around the rim of a pretty massive canyon carved out by the Colorado River. There were stone walls for a lot of the trail and fences at the designated overlooks, but particularly out at Dead Horse Point itself, you could walk right up to the edge. We did not, because that is how you fall off a canyon ledge to your death. For those of you reading this blog, worried about our party of travelers and our proximity to certain death on this trip, don’t be! You wouldn’t know it by looking at us, but we are actually a dream team for not getting too close to the edge. M and Dog are both scared of heights, and while great heights do not have any particular effect on me, I do have a healthy fear of falling to my death in an unsecured environment. Also, I love everything about safety. At several points in my adult life, I have seriously considered changing my middle name to Safety. J Safety Something or Other – it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I like my current middle name and also know that Safety has some sort of football connotation, and I don’t need anyone thinking that I like football. The only thing at odds with our dream team operations is that Dog is a little bit stupid, and we are nervous that he might chase a blowing leaf or a sun spot from a watch right over the edge of cliff without knowing that it is a cliff. So we are always on high alert for that enthusiasm to manifest itself, and try to keep Dog at least a leash length away from all edges of everything always.

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Anyway, we didn’t fall off a cliff, and we got to see some awesome views! This stop was a perfect way to stretch our legs before we settled in for the 5hr drive west. The timing, of course, was way off from our plan, and we didn’t hit the road until about the time we should have been checking in at the next place. We definitely could have killed another couple of days in this part of the country, but adventure was calling our names elsewhere!