We headed to Arches this morning to hike Delicate Arch which is probably the most famous Arch in all of Arches. It is so famous that it is on the Utah license plate. It was a 3 mile hike round trip.
That is us standing under the arch. We are hard to see because the arch is so much bigger than you would think. Many people make the hike to Delicate Arch and when you see it, it takes your breath away. It is such a unique thing because there are huge rocks and boulders all around and this arch stands alone in the middle of it all- such a marvelous mystery.
I like the photo below better because you can see us, Delicate Arch and the beautiful mountains in the background. Every time I am out west, I am reminded that I am a mountain person over a beach person.
Every year on her anniversary, my mom puts on her wedding dress and takes a picture. The dress has traveled all over the world and it made this hike. The funny thing was that there were others taking pictures of them as well. This year is 44 years.
Beyond Delicate Arch itself, there were so many cool moments along the way with rocks to climb for the boys as well. So far, this has been the busiest hike we have seen. There was not one moment on this hike where it was just the six of us. We loved the hike, but we love it more when there aren't always others around us.
After Delicate Arch, we went to hike the Windows Section of Arches which was also crawling with people. Arches is the second most visited National Park in Utah with over 1.6 million visitors. They are doing road construction in here as well, so there is even less areas for people to spread out. In addition to that, the hikes are much shorter here than they are at Canyonlands. The Windows hike was 1 mile to see both the norther window, the southern window and Turret Arch.
My little climbing monkeys.
You can see in the picture below and above how high we climbed to get to these rocks. It appears that climbing big rocks is fun for all ages and not just the kids :)
Below, you can see both windows from Turret Arch, which is also the Arch that we were climbing up.
Luckily, the next hike to Double Arch left from the same parking lot. Getting a parking spot here was very difficult, so we were thankful that we did not have to leave to find another one. We stopped at the car and grabbed our lunch to take on the next short hike to Double Arch.
We picnicked on the giant rocks in the shade under the first arch.
As soon as they were done eating, they started climbing and kept going up.
After lunch, mom, the boys and I climbed up the second arch of Double Arch. It was a little bit more treacherous than it looks because the back side was a complete drop off and the ledge to sit on was not very thick. We were more nervous when the guy who went up in front of us did it with an infant on his shoulders and holding the hand of his toddler.
You can see how big the opening is in the picture below and we are on the right side of it.
Our last stop of the day was Balanced Rock which is appropriately named as well. Here, the boys are holding it up. They said it was pretty heavy! It was only a 0.4 mile hike round trip as you walked around it.
We saw a ton of things in Arches and enjoyed our day, but it was time to head back to the campsite to relax for the afternoon evening. Below is a picture of our camper in the site overlooking the canyon.
After dinner, we played some Kan Jam with Poppy. He is very good at this game due to his height and long arms.
After we put the boys to bed, we saw the kit fox out roaming around the campsites. He did not seem nervous by any of the people.
Beautiful sunset to cap off our day with 4.9 miles of hiking.
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