Last updated: August 16, 2023

In my efforts to see all of America’s national parks, I jumped at the chance to take a nine day group travel adventure with GAdventures to hike the five national parks in Utah. These parks are affectionately referred to as The Mighty Five by national park nerds like myself and include: Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion.

What I didn’t realize at the time of booking was what a beautiful journey I’d experience and the amazing people that would accompany me. Utah is already beautiful with all it’s rock formations, but the five national parks it holds are truly spectacular.

Accomodations

After we explored Joint Trail of the Canyonlands Needle District, we actually headed back to Canyonlands RV Resort and Campground where we had spent the night prior to get a good nights rest before tackling Arches National Park.

Arches National Park

The plan for this day was to be at Delicate Arch Viewpoint to watch the sunrise and then head to Devils Garden and Double O Arch.

Delicate Arch

I was in the van at 3:30AM with the rest of my hiking mates ready to tackle the hike that would put us at Delicate Arch Viewpoint before sunrise so we could witness the beauty of watching the sunrise over Utahs more famous arch. We piled out of the van with our headlamps and flashlights with much anticipation of this hike. About 30 minutes in, it began to rain. We trudged along as it began to rain harder and our guide stopped to confirm with us that we wanted to continue as we had about two hours left. We all stood there with rain dripping off our noses and in unity, said, “YES!” We had come this far… might as well finish it, despite being soaked and carrying all of our gear. We marched along for another hour and a half when our guide told us we had to go back due to the rushing waters and flooding. There was no way to finish… nature was against us. We had hiked almost three miles. This was a bummer, but I was still in pretty good spirits. However, when we finally made it back to the vehicle, I discovered that in my haste to get on the trail, I forgot to take my national park stamp book out of my backpack and it was water damaged (I found out my backpack was not, in fact, waterproof). At the same time, I discovered my phone decided to blink the Apple logo over and over again and could not be remedied. This was not due to any water damage, but because it just decided it’s time was up. It was at this point, I almost cried in front of everyone (they all felt really bad for me).

Around 17 seconds after I wanted to cry, I got mad. I was cold, drenched, and tired. My travel book was damaged and I had no phone to call family or take photos and videos. All that for NOTHING… we didn’t even get to see the sunrise (that I had convinced myself would have rainbows because of the rain). It took me all day to get over it and like three more days to come to terms with the fact that I would not be having a phone for the remainder of the trip.

A big thanks to my camping mates for letting me fume on this day. They were the best and tried super hard to Google ways to fix my phone and even tried to find a nearby phone repair store but to no avail.

I later accepted my fate, but for the remainder of the day, I wasn’t having any positive vibes.

The good news is that I still had my Canon to take photos, but no way to upload them for sharing until I got a new phone which put me way behind in posting and blogging. Very cool to have a collaboration of everyone’s videos and photos of this early morning hike, though!

I just have to laugh at this.

Devils Garden

We salvaged the morning by finding a diner and clung to hot coffee cups while we dried off and downed warm breakfast. After that, we headed to Devils Garden where I was still upset about not having my phone for more than half the trip that remained and having to rely on my Canon for the rest of my photos. The Canon is great for jaw dropping shots, but most of my photos were snapped with my phone as we were normally hiking and it’s more convenient to take photos and videos that way. At the time of this writing, I am still quite miffed about the whole thing.

My cabin-mate, Virginia, titled this for me. 😂

That said, I eventually got over my poor luck and am thankful for the rest of the day. Check out these spectacular photos (that I took with the dang Canon, haha). See? Here I am doing just that:

Devils Garden Trail is about seven miles and offers stunning views of Arches. The highlight is Landscape Arch, which had the longest span of any arch in North America. Double O is also a popular arch, however, they are all quite wondrous.

Look how tiny I am in relation to this arch!

If you’ve been to Arches, did you get to actually see Delicate Arch? If so, share a photo with me since I didn’t get to see it. Also, if you’ve had a time when your hiking adventure didn’t turn out quite the way you’d planned, tell me so we can laugh together. The good news is, I at least got my cancellation stamp (and my book mocks me by featuring Delicate Arch, of course!). #TooFunny