5 Tips for Visiting Arches National Park with Kids

One of the best things about living in Utah are our five National Parks, all within a few hours distance of Salt Lake City. We recently took a day-trip to Moab (yes, we spent roughly eight hours in the car with 1 and 4 year-old + several hours hiking in the park and a stop in Moab for dinner) and lived to tell the tale. Furthermore we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! While we've done a lot in the National Parks without kids, it was so much fun to have them with us to experience the beauty of the park through young eyes.

Here are a few things that worked for us and helped us to have a fun and successful trip:

1. Build their enthusiasm. We have taken a lot of long walks together as a family, but have never asked our four year-old to complete any hike as difficult as the hike to Delicate Arch on her own two-feet. To ensure her success we did whatever we could to get her excited about what we would see on the hike. We looked at pictures from previous trips to Arches (on this trip she wanted to recreate some of those pictures), showed her the state license plate featuring Delicate Arch, and generally just discussed how cool it would be if she was able to do this hike at her age.

2. Come Prepared. This seems fairly obvious but to do this hike with kids you will need plenty of water and a few snacks (as motivators to keep them moving), a child carrier for young children, good shoes, first-aid kit, diapers, wipes, sunglasses, etc. At the same time, it is best to pack as light as possible in case the kids need help along the way.

3. Make it fun! Think of the techniques that motivate children, and use them while on this hike. My daughter enjoyed "racing" us up the slick rock (in areas where safe), take silly pictures, counting the rock carins (my daughter even built her own mini-rock carin with pebbles with pebbles she found during one of our breaks.) Let them get their energy out and have fun while doing so.

4. Embrace the dirt. Along the trail to Landscape Arch, parts of the path were very soft fine sand. I lost count of the number of young children I saw playing in the sand. When my own children jumped in we let them play and have a good time... and then we cleaned them off. (Remember to shake the sand out of those shoes or you'll end up with a pile on your carpet or furniture like we did.)

5. Be vigilant. When we reached the viewpoint for Delicate Arch and let our one year-old out of her carrier, she went crazy and started trying to climb everything! Keeping her close with arms always outstretched to help when needed, was critical in keeping her safe. We watched a family loose their i-pad to the bottom bowl located beneath the Arch and the slide to the bottom seemed to take forever. The same goes with keeping older kids safe, be vigilant. When my daughter found a narrow slot canyon that is part of the trail to Landscape Arch and started to climb up, we had to tell her to stop at a certain point because we knew that climbing any further would lead to an accident.