Arches Without Fees: Hiking Devil’s Garden

Overview ~ Notes ~ Reflections ~ Photos

 

 

Top row: Views from trail near Double-O Arch over Devil's Garden and sandstone fins.

Bottom row: Double-O Arch and Landscape Arch in Arches National Park, Moab.
 

This post is about a hike through Arches National Park’s Devil’s Garden trail to Double O Arch. We were in Moab for a wedding and had limited free time to explore so we only caught a glimpse of Moab’s surreal beauty. Even this hike was cut short for a pre-wedding dinner back in town. On the day we visited the park entrance was wide open: no fees were collected due to the government shutdown.

Overview 

Length: ~7.2 km (4.5 miles) (out-and-back to Double O Arch; full loop longer) 

Duration: 1.5 hours (we turned back before completing the loop) 

Elevation gain: 101 m (331 ft) 

Location: USA, Utah, Moab, Arches National Park

The Devil’s Garden trail is one of Arches National Park’s signature hikes, leading to a series of arches tucked into sandstone fins and ridges. Our destination was Double O Arch, a dramatic formation where two arches stack one above the other, like nature’s own punctuation mark. 

Notes

Driving into Arches felt surreal. We had not experienced this landscape in person before and were blown away. Then, you normally stop at the entrance station, pay the fee, and get a map. (Or in some days we heard, you might have to wait to get into the park.) But because of the government shutdown, the booths were empty. We simply rolled into the park, a free pass into one of America’s most iconic landscapes. It was unsettling—like sneaking into a museum after hours—but also a reminder of how fragile the systems are that protect these places.

The trail itself begins at Devil’s Garden trailhead, literally the end of the road in the park. From the trailhead, you go past Landscape Arch, one of the longest natural arches in the world. From there, the path grows more rugged, scrambling over slickrock and weaving through sandstone fins.


We reached Double O Arch, marveling at how erosion had carved two openings in the same sandstone wall. The larger arch frames the desert beyond, while the smaller one sits below like a hidden window. Standing there, it’s easy to wonder how these arches form. The answer lies in millions of years of geologic processes:

• Sandstone layers deposited in ancient seas.
• Uplift and erosion exposing the rock.
• Cracks forming in the sandstone fins.
• Water seeping in, freezing and thawing, breaking rock apart.
• Wind and rain slowly enlarging openings until arches emerge.

Arches are temporary features in geologic time—eventually they collapse. Landscape Arch, for example, has shed massive rock slabs in recent decades, a reminder that these formations are always changing.

We didn’t complete the loop trail. Time was short, and Moab awaited with a pre-wedding dinner. Hiking back the way we came, we felt both satisfied and determined to return to explore more in the proper Travelmarx style. That said, the wedding activities were a blast.

Reflections

Returning to the United States after time away felt strangely disorienting. Driving into Arches without paying an entrance fee—because of the government shutdown—only heightened the sense that we’d stepped into a country paused mid-sentence. The landscape itself was timeless, yet the atmosphere back home was anything but: a highly charged political environment where even casual family conversations required careful navigation to avoid hot-button topics.

Against that backdrop, our hike through Devil’s Garden became more than just a walk among arches. It was a reminder of permanence and impermanence—the sandstone fins shaped over millions of years, and the fleeting turbulence of human affairs. Later that evening, we shifted from the silence of the desert to the joy of a wedding pre-celebration in Moab. The next day we would be not just guests but officiants, standing with a young couple as they began their life together.

The juxtaposition was striking: political gridlock on the national stage, personal restraint in family conversations, and then, in the middle of it all, the unambiguous joy of a wedding. The arches will one day collapse, the political climate will shift, but what endures are the bonds we create with one another: shared celebrations, moments of togetherness, and the sense of being united for common ends.

Photos

 

Left: View of Landscape Arch with grey sky.
Right: Trail in Devil's Garden.

 

Left: Sandstone fins in Devil's Garden, Arches National Park, Moab.

Right: A sign explaining how the "walls" or "fins" are formed.

  

Left: Formation in Devil's Garden.

Center: Sign at trailhead showing the possible routes.

Right: Our tracks for walk from trailhead to Double-O and back.