A Much Nicer Day At Arches

May 20, 2026  — Day 57

Sun Outdoors Canyonlands, Moab UT

We’ve spoken before about dinner and a show (when there are people parking in neighboring sites, sometimes it’s pretty hilarious). How about breakfast and a show!? The campers at the end of our row turned left to leave & took out their water spigot. Susan saw them hit something on the drivers side but at the time didn’t realize it was the water spigot. Paul saw them go up and over the curb on the passenger side. Two things in 30 feet. That’s some seriously bad driving. Worse, they just drove away! (Oh, if only everyone was perfect like us. :- )

Their next door neighbors must have notified the park because they had staff there within minutes. They couldn’t work on it with the water on so they walked the row turning everyone off. Susan was in the middle of doing dishes. And guess what? For weight savings we had arrived almost bone dry. It wouldn’t matter because we had full hookups, right? There were just a few gallons in the tank. Never again, we’ll always travel with a reasonable amount water, probably about 1/3 of a tank.

We wanted to get some bikes rides in but our bikes were filthy. The red dust here gets into and on everything. You would think that would just be cosmetic but the red dust isn’t just dust, it’s rock. If we pedaled our gears and chains would be ground to nothing. So we grabbed about a gallon of what water we did have, pouring it over the gears, scrubbing them with a ex-kitchen scrubby brush, and then lubed the chains and gears. However, you need the rear tire off the ground to do the process. We called the park, did they have a bike repair station? This isn’t as dumb as it sounds. Moab is a mecca for mountain bikes and Jeeps. You see bike stations here and there in town and even at the trailheads. They didn’t have one but we improvised! Paul got out the RV’s leveling blocks and slapped a section of 2×12 lumber on top of it. Susan sat on that contraption and Paul loaded the bike onto it. It worked great for Paul’s bike. However Susan’s e-bike was just too heavy. So we had to have one person hold the bike up while the other one did the cleaning. That job done we were off to Arches to see the ones we skipped.

Returning to Arches we had a very short wait at the entrance, just a few minutes and drove straight through the park to the Windows and Doubles parking lot. The path to the Windows was loose, packed gravel and stone stairs, but the stairs were pretty dreadful. A slope of gravel may have felt sturdier underfoot.

On the way up, we looked off to the side to the other what we thought was arch-less rock formation only to see 2 more arches, one huge (the Turret Arch), and a small arch. We figured we’d hit that one on the way down since it was so close.

But soon the Arch was in sight.

Looking up was spooky, it looked like some rocks could come down at any second. And indeed, in 1940s the Scenic Arch, the last one that we didn’t visit yesterday, almost doubled in size overnight from a rockfall!

On the way back we realized that we’d have to go almost all the way to the bottom and head back up again to visit Turret Arch. Given the heat and the real desire to see the Double Arch we passed going to the Turret Arch.

But do we drive there? It could be difficult to give up our parking space. The walk to the next arch was all downhill which of course meant it was uphill going back to the car in the hot sun.

There was a sign on the way in telling is to look for hidden arches, much like that baby one next to Turret. This path had 10 total, sure enough, we found our first and eventually we found 9 of the 10. That’s an A, right?)

The double arch did not disappoint.

As you got closer more features, and more hidden arches, were revealed.

Paul went a little further in that one than Susan did because it was just too hot for her. The signs warned that getting up was much easier than getting down. Paul stopped next to a giant yellow arrow that the Park Service placed there to let you know to stop climbing. It got harder from that point. Or maybe we pasted that in.

Paul was happy to see that this one didn’t have any loose rocks.

It was fun looking up, seeing the different shapes.

These two spots really made Arches wonderful us. We’re glad we came back. We made it out just before the Visitor Center aka Gift Shop closed. We got our fridge magnet and the all important Passport book stamped.