Finding Balance at Arches National Park

When we were planning our trip out West, Arches National Park was at the top of our list! 😍 But we have to say that our planning wasn't exactly well thought-out. It's actually pretty hard to pin point where it all stared to go wrong. lol

#balance

We spent the previous day driving to Moab and didn't check-in to our colorful little bungalow (blog post coming soon) until around 11pm. Obviously office hours were closed and we had no one to contact to locate where we were staying. We had to use GPS, we googled photos to see if we could recognize the area from the internet, and plain luck. Luckily, it all worked out but we were pretty tired from traveling.

Our initial plans to visit Arches National Park (We were most excited to see the Delicate Arch) was to wake up early to catch the sunrise and go for a morning hike before heading out to our meet up with our off-roading guide at 2pm. (Video coming soon) Well, all didn't work out because we decided to hit the snooze button a bit longer than planned and missed sunrise by 3 hours. Instead, we decided to go check it out either way by car instead of going for a hike to make sure we made it in time for off-roading.

Things got confusing as soon as we got to the entrance to pay for admission.

Let us explain our situation

When we decided on our trip to the National Parks, Nicholle found a great deal online to pay an upfront parking fee so that we would not only save money but save time. Sadly, the pass was left home in Atlanta 😅so we were hoping that by showing the emailed receipt would be good enough to gain access without to re-pay for parking. Somehow we talked our way in but once we parked, we realized we didn't have any time to go explore the park, so we had to leave! All that for pretty much nothing since we had to turn right back around to meet our tour guide. (Which yes, we were late for but we had the time of our lives!)

As soon as we finished up off-roading, we headed back to Arches in hopes that the same Park Ranger we spoke to about our pass situation would be there still. She was, but informed us that the park was closing within the hour and that we didn't have much time to visit. At the time, we didn't realize the park closed at 6pm and we got there at 5pm 🙄 She let us in anyways, and we were so excited to go see the #delicatearch! As we were driving up, we passed many other beautiful canyon formations. On our way to the Delicate Arch, a Park Ranger was turning people away from going any further because you aren't allowed to go past a certain point after a certain time. It was only just after 5! #lame

So at the end of the day, we didn't get to see the Delicate Arch that we were so excited for, but instead we got to spend some time admiring the #Balancedrock. (Which was closer to the entrance.)

Moral of the story is, sometimes we just have to go with the flow. We aren't the most perfect travelers but we still made the most of our time! Even though we didn't get to spend much time at Arches, we were happy we caught the amazing sunset 🌅. And hopefully one day, we will be back to finally see the Arches!

#archesnationalpark #archesnps #utah #utahisrad #beutahful #wowutah #storytime