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Guaranteed Parking: Hike in the Dark at Arches National Park
To reach Delicate Arch for the sunrise, we hiked in the dark!
Last October, my husband and I traveled to several of our National Parks in the Southwestern United States. Our first stop was Arches National Park in Moab Utah. We arrived late in the day, after dark, after taking an early morning flight from Minneapolis to Denver. There we picked up our rental car and drove the rest of the way west through Colorado to Moab, Utah.
We found Utah to be a beautiful state. After settling in at our hotel we planned the hikes for the next day. If you don’t already know, an overcrowding problem, accompanied by a lack of adequate parking space is hindering National Park visitations. We had read about this, as well as being personally warned by other family members who visited the parks earlier in 2021.
As our plan evolved, we got up at 4:30 am and were in the park by 5:15 am. We packed the night before, ensuring we had snacks, water, sunscreen, and hats for our outing. We wanted to see the sunrise at Delicate Arch, one of the more famous natural stone arches in the park. We looked up the time of the sunrise, and the length of the hike from the trailhead at the parking lot, and set the time to head out from there. Luckily, we had an annual pass for visits to land…
