Our first time at Arches National Park! (Delicate Arch, Park Avenue, Double Arch, & MORE!)

It's surreal getting to see this. It's one of those things you've seen all your life and you finally get the chance to see it. And it lived up to the hype. We've kind of lost count today of how many arches we've seen. We've seen loads of them, but I can already tell this one's going to be my favorite one we've seen so far today. Yesterday we spent our first day in the Moab area at Canyonlands Island in the Sky District. We saw the famous Mesa Arch at sunrise, visited a ton of viewpoints, and enjoyed delicious pizzas in town. For the next couple days we're going to be exploring Arches National Park, which is located just northeast of Canyonlands. This park is home to over 2,000 natural arches and our goal is to see as many as we possibly can. We've been to Moab a couple times in the past, but we've never made it to Arches National Park. We are super excited to finally experience the park and we can't think of a better way to kick off our time I see it! Oh wow. This is so surreal seeing this for the very first time. It might be bigger than I thought it would be. It's just as beautiful though. So we've been sitting here for about an hour now. The sun's risen, getting some nice gorgeous light all through the valley, the surrounding area, and on the arch. It's totally worth getting up at three o'clock in the morning to get out here. It's just so beautiful. Not even just the arch but the mountains over there and the cool rocks over here and then all the stuff behind us is just bucket list item. Like if you if you can do this in your lifetime you have to do this. This is just it's surreal getting to see this. It's one of those things you've seen all your life and you finally get the chance to see it. And it lived up to the hype. Out of the over 2,000 arches in the park, the Delicate Arch is definitely the most famous and popular of them all and probably one of the most famous landmarks in the United States. And the opening underneath the arch is 46 feet tall and 32 feet wide making it the largest freestanding arch in the park. Before it was called the Delicate Arch it had a couple other unique names like Old Maid's Bloomers and Cowboy's Chaps which I can definitely see that one. And the term delicate didn't appear until an article in 1934 which described it as the most delicately chiseled arch in the area. The hike to the Delicate Arch is about 3.2 miles round trip and it can be pretty steep in spots and to be honest it was oh there's a lot of gnats biting gnats right now. To be honest it was kind of hard to navigate in the dark. There are some trail markers and the all trails map helped so much. It took us about 40 minutes to get up in the dark and we're heading heading down now and I think it'll probably take us like 35 minutes or so. Alright off to see more arches. Three arches along the way. I was not expecting this. This looks really fun. We made it to Broken Arch. You can see in the middle where there's actually it's actually a crack so it's not technically broken as the sign at the beginning of the trail says but I guess that depends on your definition of broken. We're in agreement that out of the three arches on the trail the Tapestry Arch is our favorite. We saw it from far and it looked just like a big hole in the side of the rock but as you get closer you can see that it is an arch and there is some sky on the other side but I don't know. I don't know why we like it the best to be honest. I think I like it because it's kind of like a stage. It has like a backdrop. You know the lights would be all up there. Adam just wants to perform. Music concert. How you doing everybody out there? After the Tapestry Arch you can either go back the same way you came or you can complete the whole loop and you go through the campground and just after the campground part is this. Really interesting. I don't really know what to call it. It's kind of like a passageway full of cool rocks and trees and it's just beautiful and this whole hike has just been full of surprises. Way cooler. Way cooler than I thought it would be. This is Balanced Rock. It's 128 feet tall. The boulder on top is 55 feet tall and weighs 3,500 tons and one day it's gonna fall and that's gonna be a loud boom. So there's a little path you can take that'll walk you all the way around it and every angle you get it looks a little bit different and it says on the sign that looks can be deceiving. Looks way bigger from this side. The right side I guess on the path. It looks way sketchier from this angle. Like it looks way more balanced. Park Avenue because all the steep walls and walking through them kind of is similar to walking in a city park which we saw this hike or we saw this massive these walls are so I've been so excited to do this all day. All cliffs and sheer walls around makes you really feel like you're walking through Arches York City without all the commotion all the people and the honking. Smells so good. We left the park for a little bit and headed to Moab to grab some takeout from a three the last two days and being very hangry the hanger and slinger was way too real so we quickly devoured our takeout before we could even really show you or tell you about it but we got the penang curry and the khao soi and they were both so dang good. It was it hit the spot so you'll just have to go try it for yourself and trust us that it was very good but we're now fueled up and we have two more spots that we're going to check out today starting with the windows trail. So the windows trail is a short loop trail that includes two windows the north and the south window as well as the turret arch which is this crazy looking arch that has this big hole right next to it this huge just I don't know fins the correct term it's just unlike any arch we've seen in the park so far. So we learned that windows are actually arches that are particularly large and they're high up on a rock wall or they frame a spectacular view right behind it and to qualify as an arch it has to be at least three feet long but there's no width requirement so some of them in the in the park you have to place your cheek up to the canyon wall to be able to see some light through it pretty crazy. For our final arch or should I say arches of the day we are headed to double arch which is one of the arches we are most excited to see while here in the park. It shares a parking lot with the turret arch and the windows so it's super easy to do them together and it gets its name double arch because it's two different arches but they share the same stone foundation for both of their outer legs and one unique thing about this arch besides the fact that it's two in one is that it was formed by downward water erosion versus side to side water erosion. It's a short and easy walk to double arch and you see tons of arches all along the way we've kind of lost count today of how many arches we've seen we've seen loads of them but I can already tell this one's going to be my favorite one we've seen so far today. So we learned that the larger opening of these two is the third longest in the park but it's also the highest arch in the park and some of its former names were twin bow bridges double windows and our personal favorite jug handles. I don't know why I think that one's so funny it's really funny but as Adam said he thinks this might be his favorite I also agree it's very hard to beat the delicate arch I'd say they're very neck and neck but how do you beat two magnificent arches connected with the light coming in right lighting is helping too and it's easier to get to it's a super easy walk so we're tired so maybe that's why it's winning what a crazy busy day we've been going for almost 17 hours now we've seen so much amazing stuff but we are entirely pooped it is time to hit the hay but we do have one more day or I guess you could say half a day at arches tomorrow and we're going to be doing a long hike that we are very excited about it's me Bella from Twilight natural sunscreen makes us look like vampires chivalrous you he really is like this even when the camera's not rolling how you doing everybody out there we're good uh this one's dedicated to my mom somebody's tired perks of having our bed with us all the time