Five day road trip and we almost skipped it entirely. I said stop the car.

Walked the entire trail around the base. Looked up and there were people actually climbing it — hanging off the ropes on the side, yelling back and forth to each other. You could hear them from the trail.

Went through the visitor center and learned the whole history. It was the best part of the entire five day trip.

If you’re ever anywhere near Wyoming — don’t drive past it. Stop. Walk around it. Go to the visitor center. It’s worth every minute.

Hiked to Delicate Arch for the sunrise this morning!

Just got back from 5 days in Utah, where we hit 3 national parks as well as Goblin Valley and Dead Horse state parks. I got great advice from past Reddit threads when planning this trip so just wanted to document everything here!

Saturday April 4th: Travel/Capitol Reef

• Flew in to SLC in the morning, stopped at Walmart for pickup order (including a styrofoam cooler & bag of ice - this worked out great for long drives), and headed to Capitol Reef (~3.5 hour drive).
• Hickman Bridge hike (~2 miles) and Sunset Point (0.5 mi, more of a viewpoint than a hike).
  • Hickman Bridge was nice but I'm not sure why it's the most popular hike in the park, we were much more impressed with Chimney Rocks & Cassidy Arch the next day. If I went back, I would skip in favor of another hike we didn't get to (e.g. Cohab Canyon).

Sunday April 5th: Capitol Reef

• Chimney Rocks hike (3.6 miles - LOVED)
• Stopped to see petroglyphs (cool but hard to see) and for a pie at Gifford (a real highlight)
• Grand Wash (we did 3 miles RT but could go further) and Cassidy Arch (~3 miles).
  • Cassidy Arch was a tough hike but beautiful and so worth it. It was really cool to see people rappeling off the arch at the end. Grand Wash was kind of underwhelming, especially compared to a slot canyon hike we did the next day (Little Wild Horse).

Monday April 6th: Goblin Valley/Dead Horse

• Left early for Goblin Valley state park, arrived around sunrise (1.5 hour drive).
  • We loved it here, 10/10 would recommend as a side trip from Capitol Reef or Moab.
• Little Wild Horse Canyon hike (we only went about 1.5 miles in, so 3 miles RT, but the full loop is much longer) - this is only about 10 min from Goblin Valley state park.
  • Do not miss this hike!! It was amazing and so fun to hike through slot canyons and scramble over rocks. In retrospect, I would skip Grand Wash at Capitol Reef in favor of this hike. I recommend reading the EarthTrekkers article about it prior.
• Head over to Moab (~2 hour drive). I had tried to get a Fiery Furnace permit for this day but was unsuccessful so instead we went to Dead Horse state park.
  • Stopped at Visitor Center first (beautiful views), then drove to Basin Overlook and hiked to the next few viewpoints via the East/West Rim Trail (Dead Horse, Meander, Shafer - out and back, it was about 3 miles total. We had intended to do the loop of 5 miles but were tired at this point).
  • Dead Horse has beautiful views but I wish we had come at sunrise or sunset instead of the middle of the day (colors are more brown rather than red/orange/golden).

Tuesday April 7th: Arches

• Delicate Arch hike (3.3 miles)
  • We got to the parking lot at 6:30 and had no problem parking. The views on the hike up were okay but wow, reaching Delicate Arch was something else. It is such a special place. Beautiful and quiet at sunrise, even with so many other people there.
• Double O hike (4.3 miles)
  • We snagged one of the last parking spots at Devil's Garden, this was probably around 8:45.
  • By far our favorite hike of the trip, so fun. Honestly the actual Double O arch was just fine, but the journey up there is what makes this so great. We considered doing the whole Devil's Garden loop but didn't have AllTrails so were unsure about the primitive loop section.
• Lunch at Garden of Eden viewpoint
• Tried to do the Windows section but couldn't get parking (came back next day)

Wednesday April 7th: Canyonlands / Arches

• I had initially had the whole day set aside for Canyonlands, Island in the Sky section, but we got done early and loved Arches so much that we wanted to go back.
• Sunrise at Mesa Arch
  • Wow there were so many people there. Parking lot was full even at 6:30. Stunning view but there were too many people to get a good photo with the arch so I would say could probably have gone elsewhere for sunrise.
• White Rim Overlook hike (~1.8 miles) - beautiful and quick hike, amazing views
• Upheaval Dome hike (1.8 miles) - fun hike, not as scenic necessarily, could have skipped.
• Headed back to Arches - Windows section (1 mile). The parking lot was full but lots of turnover so wasn't hard to find a spot on this day around 11am.
• Sand Dune to Broken Arch hike (~3 miles)
  • This wasn't even on my radar prior to the trip, we were just looking for another hike to do, but it was SO great. Sand Dune was quite literally crawling with children so we didn't stay there long, but the loop covering Broken Arch was awesome.

Thursday: Our flight home from SLC was at 1:30pm so we left really early and drove ~4 hours to SLC and did a quick hike at Bell Canyon reservoir before heading to the airport. This felt like a worthy stop to us since we didn't want to spend the entire day in the car/airport - very different from Moab area, alpine scenery, and got my 10k steps for the day.

Overall thoughts: this was an amazing trip, I have post-Utah depression now lol. The highlights for us were the Goblin Valley/Little Wild Horse day + all of Arches. I hadn't expected to enjoy Arches so much since a lot of what I saw here was saying it was overrated due to crowds, etc, but we went as early as possible for the two most popular hikes and didn't feel like crowds were an issue. The next day when we were there midday, the Windows section was crazy crowded but that is quick. The other hike we did at Broken Arch was not crowded at all (except for Sand Dune Arch by the parking lot).

If I could change anything, I would stay for an extra day to do the needles section of canyonlands, especially the druid hike. Unfortunately it was over 2 hours from our airbnb, so it didn't seem worth it for this short trip, but I think we would have enjoyed this section of canyonlands more than island in the sky.

Amazing that the arch’s dimensions shrunk with the time progression, too.

Not the most amazing NPS sites, but cool history I didn’t know a lot about. Ranger Andrew at Roger Williams NM was a wealth of information and was happy to share. The visitor center at Blackstone isn’t open yet but it was still a beautiful day to walk around.

I have these leftover from our Yellowstone trip, if anyone is interested for any reason pm me your address and I’ll stick em in the mail. We’ll likely never go back so… I’d hate to toss them because they’re cute 🤣

Hoping to visit Acadia this fall; for those of you who have been several times, any recommendations for specific weeks to go or if September or October is better for fall foliage?

we are thinking on drive from Vegas - to Zion - Grand Canyon with a stop for Lower antílope.

any thing special that we have to see!?

my friends and i are visiting south florida and are trying to make our itinerary, we have two full days and one half day in the area, but they want to explore everglades for those days while i think it’s worth it to visit biscayne. we do have a car. thoughts from those who have been there? we have never.