We visited Arches on May 14, 2021. The Lady had signed up to get their tweets, so she knew that park capacity was being surpassed daily. They were closing the park to additional visitors at 11am. Or earlier. The park was re-opening in the late afternoon when more visitors could be accommodated in this “small” park.
Plus, we knew that popular spots would run out of parking fast. So we spent the night in Moab, and then got up at 6a to arrive at the park at 7:30a.
We had to wait in line for 15 minutes to get into the park; they had both lanes open to get the paying visitors into the park. We, of course, had our Golden Eagle passports, so we were in without paying the $30 per car. We elected to drive straight to the iconic Delicate Arch first … and we got there with plenty of parking available. After that picture was captured, we proceeded to drive through the rest of the park at our leisure, stopping at every designated wide spot in the road to take pictures.
The park’s website said we could spend 10 minutes at every Viewpoint, and finish the park’s paved roads in 4-1/2 hours. We beat that time, and felt that we had been there, done that.
Here is what we saw.
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MowryJournal.com: Arches National Park, 2014
National Park Service: Arches National Park