What is the best place for sunset at Arches National Park?

We have been traveling straight east for days, but we took a detour off Highway 50 for a stop at a special national park. Six years ago we spent a week here at Moab, Utah. In our rushed trip this year we'll only get to spend three days in this area. So we got started right away with an evening drive into Arches National Park. We were looking for the best place for sunset. We waited to go into the park until around 6:00 p.m., hoping that the sizzling temperatures would be cooling off a little by then. The sun was low in the sky, lighting up the big red rock formations that greet visitors to the national park.

This is one of the biggest red rocks, Courthouse Towers, so we parked to take a closer look. With Mark standing close to the parking lot, that doesn't look so big.

 

But when he ran up to get close to it, suddenly it looked very big. In the zoomed-in picture below, you can see that Mark is about the same height as that white stripe of rock at the base.

In the big picture, you see that white stripe is very small, and very low to the ground at the base of Courthouse Rock. Can you see Mark standing in front of that stripe at the bottom in the picture below?

Likewise, the funny knobs of rock in the distance seem small. 

But when Denisa stood under Balanced Rock, we found that rock is about the size of three school buses. It's probably not smart to stand under three buses balanced precariously like that. But you can see that Denisa did that in the picture below.

After our brush with smoke in California, seeing a distant wild fire will always make us uneasy. It looks like a new fire has started very close to the national park. The good news is that they got it out quickly because it didn't make the news.

When we asked the ranger at the visitor center where we should go for sunset, he mentioned the Delicate Arch. We did that six years ago, so we're including the picture with Denisa waving underneath that we took in 2015.

Even though it was a lovely place for sunset, it is always crazy crowded. 

The ranger also mentioned the Fiery Furnace Viewpoint, so we stopped there. It was lovely with the lowering sun lighting up those red rocks.

But we really were wanting an arch for sunset at Arches National Park, so we drove on.

The Ranger had also mentioned an off-the-beaten-path arch that few people visit. We didn't see it six years ago, so we turned on to the gravel road that leads towards Tower Arch.

That gravel road turned into a dry sandy river bottom, and it doesn't get any better for the next eight miles. Maybe this four-wheel-drive-recommended road is why few people visit Tower Arch.

After a rough 8.2-mile drive, we pulled into the parking lot where only one other car was parked. Then we started the hike that took us straight up.

We were in the middle of a sandy desert, but beautiful red rocks rose up in front of us.

The setting sun lights up those red pinnacles. With the blue skies behind them, they are beautiful!

Arches National Park has lots of God's wonders to wander around!

Behind Denisa you can see the tall monoliths known as the "Marching Men" lined up in the distance. Lit up by the setting sun, they are now bright orange.

The final stretch of the hike was uphill through the red sand. We are hurrying, trying to get to our destination before the sun goes down.

We finally made it to Tower Arch! The top of the tower to the left is still in the sunlight, but the arch is already in the shade by the time we got our first glimpse. You can see Mark under the arch, in his red-rocks-colored shirt.

We wished we would have been here twenty minutes earlier, when the arch would have been lit up by the setting sun. But it's still very impressive, even in the shadows.

From Mark's perch under the arch, he could see the glow of the sunset across the little-seen-far-reaches of Arches National Park. If you look closely, Denisa is in each of the pictures he took, framed by the arch.

Then he took a side shot of the tower, so tall that it was still in the sun.

Unlike the crowds at Delicate Arch, we had this big beautiful place to ourselves for sunset. So Mark climbed higher up into the arch to enjoy the very uncrowded view

Of course, that also meant that we had the long hike back out of here all to ourselves as well. While the "Marching Men" were bright orange in the sunlight as we hiked in, they are a more subdued pastel shade of terra cotta in the waning light on the hike back.

We were speed-hiking on the trip back to the pickup, hoping we could make it back before we had to stumble over these rocks in the dark. We paused for one last picture at the top.

By the time we got on the road, it was completely dark. That meant we got to make the dirt-road drive back towards home with the headlights on. We're glad to have our pickup, as four-wheel-drive is recommended for this road that makes several water crossings and is quite rough.

In the dark, we could see the long line of headlights from all the cars leaving the Delicate Arch parking lot. The line stretched on as far as we could see. While we have to agree with the Ranger that Delicate Arch is a great place to be for sunset, this year we preferred our sunset at Tower Arch--all by ourselves.