The Little Known Place with More Arches Than Almost Anywhere on Earth

When most people want to see arches, they head to Arches National Park in Utah, but what most people don't know is that right across the state line in Colorado lies the second largest concentration of arches, and that's where we're headed today. Just outside of Fruita and Grand Junction, Colorado, lies the Rattlesnake Arches area, which has over 30 natural arches. There are a couple of different ways to access this area, including a 4x4 dirt road that we're going to be taking today. As a bonus, to access this dirt road, we have to drive through the Colorado National Monument, which is where we are now. The views are absolutely incredible, and I have a feeling they're only going to get better throughout the day. So, let's go do some exploring. There are some awesome pull-offs in this little path we're taking right now to this incredible view of the National Monument. Unfortunately, the dogs are not allowed on any of these dirt trails, so they're up there waiting in the car just a couple of seconds away. The views are absolutely incredible. That might need to be the last pull-off, or we're never going to make it to the arches. You're going to see it under the stars. I know, but it's too beautiful. You can't help but stop. Shortly after, the pavement turned to dirt, and we reached the start of the access roads to Rattlesnake Arches. There are two different roads that are open at different times of the year. The road to the hiking trail was long, bumpy, and while it was beautiful, it was a bit monotonous at times. So, let's fast-forward to the fun part. After a very long drive down a rocky dirt road, we finally made it here to the trailhead. Now, if you don't have a 4x4 vehicle, which I definitely would recommend for this road, you can also hike in via a different trail, or we saw some vehicles pulled off on the side of the road, so they drove to a certain point and then likely hiked the rest of the way. But, no matter how long that drive was, we are excited to be here now, and we are going to go check out some of these arches. What are you eating? Before we left the house, I made us some overnight oats and put them in the cooler, and I was thinking about them pretty much the entire drive out here, and they are very good. Some pre-hike fuel, you might call it. It's currently hunting season, so we got the dogs these bright orange vests. Have you ever seen anything cuter in your entire life? Freaking adorable. How freaking cute are you two? The cutest! So it looks like there are two different trails you can choose from to see the arches. Just like the roads, they are called the upper and lower trails. We're not sure which one we're going to take yet. I don't think we're going to have time to do both today, but it looks like one of them you probably view the arches from above, and the other one you're a little bit closer up. Douglas, come on dog, what do you have? Douglas. Dog. Oh, thank you. What a good retriever. He wants Jackson to get it from him. Dog. So we decided to take the upper trail, but it does look like if you scramble through an arch, you're able to make the trail into a loop. I was reading some information online, and that's what it says. So we're going to get to that point, see what the scramble is like. If it's too much to do with the dogs, we'll just do it as an out and back. But otherwise, we'll try to make it a loop to do both sections of the trail, which will probably end up being about 3.5 or 4 miles. Look at this view. So it's pretty wild that it took us so long to get here from the town of Fruta, but because of the way the road kind of wraps around like a horseshoe, Fruta is right there. It almost feels like it should take 10 minutes to drive here, but it took us I don't know, I want to say maybe an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes, including that drive through the National Monument, but you have a view of the town right here. So although it feels like we are really out in the middle of nowhere after that drive, we're really pretty close to town. Paul just said, I'm going to go over here to take a picture, and he found the first arch. We were just going to completely walk past it. Wow, it's huge. That's awesome. It feels like we are in a national park. Yeah, especially when you look out that way. This is crazy. This view is wild. We keep saying that Fruta feels like a cross between Moab and Sedona together. It 100% feels like we're in Moab right now, and I just feel like Fruta was a place that we never really heard about before. We had no idea how beautiful it was here and how much there was to explore in this area, and I'm just so happy we ended up here for a little bit because I know we're going to be back because there is just so much to see. I mean, this is incredible. And there's nobody here. We have it all to ourselves. I can't tell how steep it is on the other side of the arch. So we looked at the map a little bit closer, and if we were to want to make the trail into a big loop, that is the arch it's telling us to scramble through. Paul went down and looked through there. He said there is no way we're getting down there with the dog, so obviously we're going to play it safe, but he did say it's worth me going down there and checking it out. So he's going to hang out with Doug and Jackson for a second while I go get a closer look. Well, I just scrambled my way down here. Wow. Oh, my goodness. That is pretty much straight down. We definitely would be slipping and sliding, and there is no way the dogs would want to do that. If we were by ourselves, we could probably make it, but not today. That's okay. Now to figure out how to make it back up there. That arch was called Cedar Tree Arch, and from what I can tell, if we stay on this upper trail, we should come across at least two more arches. This way, buddy. Even without the arches, this landscape is absolutely gorgeous, but the arches make it so worth it. It's just incredible out here. Apparently, the second arch is right over here. I think it's right there. I can see it. Can you? Yeah, I think so. Look at these trees. Wow, you're right. So pretty. Yeah, it's right there. Oh yeah, I can see the top of it. So Paul has Duggan Jackson back there because it is a sheer cliff right here, and even standing six feet back and kind of like just starting to peer over the edge makes my stomach turn a little bit. It would be so cool to see it down from the bottom. I can see the trail down there, so someday we're going to have to come back. You can go all the way around so you don't have to scramble through the arch, and make it down there, but it's already a little bit late in the day, so we just don't have time for that today, but it would be really neat to see this one from the bottom, but also super cool to see it from up here. On the map, that arch is marked the East Rim Arch. However, I read online that it's also referred to as Rattlesnake Arch for the Rattlesnake Arches area. I'm pretty certain I also read that that first arch that we saw is the largest arch. However, this one is kind of the most iconic arch, and that's why they refer to it as Rattlesnake Arch. Just a few minutes later, we should be coming upon the viewpoint for the third arch called Bridge Arch. So we walked down just a bit further, and you can see one arch over there, and then I came upon this also, which is a very long drop down, and I think it opens up on the other side. Oh yeah, there you go. I bet from the bottom that kind of looks like a double arch. So we are officially at the end of the upper trail. We keep spotting the lower trail down there and thinking about how cool it would be to see all these arches from down there. I saw some pictures online, and they just look absolutely massive when you're standing down there on the bottom. So as amazing as this was, and totally worth doing, I think we're going to have to come back someday and do that trail down there. So we have about two miles or so to make it back to the Jeep and then of course that long drive back on that dirt road, and we probably only have an hour left of sunlight. So we just made it back, and thankfully it's still light out, although I'm sure that's going to change soon, and it's going to get dark on the drive back. And it did get pretty chilly. My hands are very cold right now. So today we only saw a few arches, but there are over 30 in this area so there is still so much left to see. So we're going to get back on the road and wrap up this video here. Hopefully you enjoyed coming along. If you're not already... My mouth is cold and it's a little hard to talk. If you're not already, we'd love if you subscribed to our channel and gave this video a thumbs up. Thanks as always for watching and we'll see you on the next adventure. I feel like I should be telling a ghost story with this light shining on my face like this. So we were about halfway down the dirt road and saw a truck up in the distance and he was so so stuck deep in the mud. And they were going to try to pull him out with an ATV. Very small side by side. So we were able to hook him up to the Jeep and pull him out. Thank goodness. They were a group of hunters. Super nice guys and they're following behind us now. But on top of being able to get them out which is great, I'm also so glad that we did have those vests for the dogs because clearly there are hunters in this area. So he's going to follow behind us on the way back. We'll make sure he gets all the way out. I'm glad we were able to help him out. And as I'm sure you can tell, it is fully pitch black now. We might need to start Paul's off-road recovery. This isn't the first time this has happened. You've probably pulled out maybe 4 or 5 vehicles over the years that we've come across. Always with a strap. Right? Yep. We need to get a winch. That's on our list. We do always travel with max tracks though and I think if the strap didn't work maybe that guy could have used the max tracks. Maybe. He had a big truck though so they would have been buried in the deep mud.