A Quick Guide on Visiting Arches National Park with Family

Arches National Park in southern Utah is an experience in nature like few others. Dramatic red cliffs tower above a desert landscape studded by fantastic rock formations. You can drive, hike or amble among them; each new perspective begs for a photo. Kids love this unreal landscape, which seems the setting for an epic fantasy movie.

While there are more than 2,000 arches in the park, these are only part of its appeal. Huge and dominating natural red sandstone cliffs tower high overhead, a boulder weighing several tons balances egg-like atop a natural rock shaft, and wildly eroded pillars rise on every side. Hiking trails lead to surprises in all directions, and all this against a background of stark rock and sand, blooming with desert plants.

The national park encompasses 76,519 acres stretching north from Moab with only a single road running through its center. From the entrance station to the final parking lot at Devil’s Garden trailhead, the distance is approximately 30 miles, but the time span you’ll pass through is measured in millions of years.

Stop at the Visitors Center for maps and so kids can learn about how these natural monuments were formed. Exhibits explain how miles-thick layers of sand that accumulated in an ancient seabed solidified into sandstone and subsequently cracked in vertical lines. More millennia of rain and wind eroded the cracks, leaving fin-like spines of sandstone that continued to erode into caves which, in turn, eroded into the arches that give the park its name.

In summer, temperatures can reach 110° F or higher, and road and trails can be crowded with buses, cars and people. But from late-January through March, temperatures are much lower and visitors have the park almost to themselves. Patches of snow on the ground and on the distant Lasal Mountains provide vivid contrast with the red stone and create a stunning backdrop.

Because of the altitude (more than 4,500 feet) and dry atmosphere, be sure your family is well-protected from the sun and carrying plenty of drinking water, no matter what season.