Top Ten National Parks: No. 10

Discovering the Beauty of America's National (and other) Parks

Jan 21, 2023

My family and I have been …

to 20 out of our nation’s 63 National Parks so far!

While 20 sounds like a lot, and it is, we still are not quite a 3rd of the way of reaching our goal of visiting all 63! Come along over the next few weeks as we give you all the details on our top 10 favorite National Parks we have visited so far!

(To visit the first post in this blog, click here. https://chasegreen.substack.com/i/97941728/why-this-blog)

Methodology:

So yes, this is going to be totally subjective … Kinda! Like rating all 31 flavors of Baskin Robbins kind of subjective. You like just about all of them, but something has to be number 31, and 30, and on and on.

The most subjective part of our rankings will be the ranking for Personal Experience because, well, that has to do with our own personal experience as a family when we went! How things went on the exact moment of our trip might be completely different than how things go for you, based on circumstance. I am also limited by my own memory, so there’s that!

That said, Personal Experience plays a huge role in how I will rank our lists of our Nation’s Parks. Thus, for every park, I will give a 1 to 5 star rating on most items, and a 1 to 10 star rating (for possible bonus points) for my family’s personal experience in the park.

Also receiving 1 to 5 star ratings will be the following categories: Scenery, Variety, Wildlife Viewing Opportunities, Camping/Lodging, Other Amenities/Recreational Opportunities, Busyness, and an Overall Score which will be an average of all of these!

So without further ado …

Let’s get to our ratings for our number 10 National Park. (For Park Name and pictures, keeping scrolling!)

Scenery:

I’m giving the scenery at this particular park a solid 3.5 stars out of 5. There are thousands of iconic rock features that give this park its name! The only mark I have against this park that brings this rating down to a 3.5 instead of a 5 is simply variety — This place is stunning, but you do see a lot of the same thing over and over again!

Variety:

Speaking of variety, not only is there not much variety to the scenery, but not much variety to much anything else either. 3.0 stars.

Wildlife:

To be honest, I can’t really remember experiencing much wildlife at all at this park. Maybe part of the problem is that we only spent about a half a day here, but this is going to cost this park some points. Looking online, it looks like you might run into lizards, birds or small mammals in this park. 2.5 stars.

Camping/Lodging:

Check out the city of Moab, Utah, which is practically in the very vicinity of this National Park! Okay, so since I’ve gotten this specific, I’ll go ahead and reveal the name of this park — Arches National Park!

Anyways, Moab is one of the quaintest, coolest towns I think we have ever visited! You should be able to find plenty of lodging options in this neat little town! 4.5 stars!

Photo by Chris Janda: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-rocks-62600/

Other Amenities/Recreation Opportunities:

Speaking of Moab, Utah, I distinctly remember seeing lots of opportunities for recreational activities, such as off-roading in dune buggies, rafting, zip-lining, etc. Moab is quite the resort town it seems! 5.0 stars!

Busyness:

Unfortunately, this is a major knock against Arches N.P. Evidently, Arches is rapidly growing in popularity, and this park just isn’t big enough to fully accommodate the growing crowds it seems. Luckily, though, just 30 minutes away or so (also located around Moab, Utah) is Canyonlands National Park. It seems to accommodate a lot more visitors, so check it out if you find yourself not being able to get into Arches (like we did at first).

I also hear that there is now a reservation system for getting into Arches N.P during peak season, so make sure and make your reservation! 2.5 stars.

Share Park Stars

Accessibility:

The way I plan on covering this in this blog is to give you a list of cities with the closest major airports. This usually doesn’t apply to my family (we drive most of the time), but I figure this is the best way to explain how easy it is to get to a place (or not!)

It looks like your best bet is to fly into Salt Lake City, Utah (3.5 hours Northwest). From there, you could rent a car or RV and enjoy a very scenic drive through the desert and/or mountainous terrain! Other options include:

Denver, CO - 5 hours Northeast
Las Vegas, NV - 6 hours Southwest
Albuquerque, NM - 6.5 hours Southeast

For accessibility, Arches National Park gets 3.5 stars!

Personal Experience:

We had a very nice time at Arches National Park. We only spent about half a day here. (We had originally only planned to visit the 4 Colorado National Parks on this trip, but decided to visit 2 in Utah for a day last minute).

This is truly a great National Park. We got to get out and explore the arches a little bit by doing a couple of trails (which get you up close and personal!), and the scenic drives are also nice. Really, the only downfall to this park was how busy it was. As stated earlier, when we first pulled up, they wouldn’t let us in because the park was full. Thankfully, we just hopped on over to Canyonlands National Park, or else this part of my rating would be much worse. I’m giving Arches National Park a personal experience rating of 5.0 stars. (Remember, that’s out of a possible 10 with bonus points a possibility in this category only).