Day 9 - Southwest National Parks Adventure

Catherine Seavoy
Oct 3
2 min read

10/2/2025

Today we explored Arches National Park, our fourth national park on this trip. We weren’t sure how crowded the park would be so we decided to get an early start. We drove right in, past the “1 hour wait from here” sign, as the sun was rising (7:15). It was beautiful. We couldn’t get on our campsite until noon so we parked at the Devil’s Garden Trailhead. The start of the trail is a wide gravel path with short overlook trails to arches.

After Landscape Arch the trail steepened and narrowed while the number of hikers dwindled.

We hiked up over a boulder ridge for a view of Double O Arch.

At the point the trail splits, with options to continue for an out and back hike to Dark Angel Arch, or start the Primitive Loop trail. We wanted to do the loop so we decided to skip Dark Angel. The description of the trail is:

Entire Devils Garden Trail

Length: 7.9 miles (12.7 km)

Elevation Change: 286 feet (87 m)

Time: 3-5 hours

Contains narrow ledges, steep exposure, and deep sand. Requires route-finding.

Trail Tips

Recommended direction for the primitive loop section is clockwise. Save enough water and energy for the long uphill hike in deep sand.

Okay maybe we’re crazy, but we weren’t the only ones. We ran into an another couple on the trail a few times, chatted about the hike, the usual “Where are you from?” stuff. They are Brian and Rhea from Pennsylvania and we joined forces with them for more than 1/2 the hike. With Andy’s picture of the trailhead map, my Google maps and Brian’s Trailink app we were able to navigate this tricky terrain. The four of us climbed over boulders, walked along ridges and slid down rocks on our butts.