Arches

 A limited resource with way too many people. A common theme but this time we are talking about Arches NP. The park management realized it was way too crowded even by todays standards. They put a reservation system in place. This could work since they limited the reservations such that you need to apply a month or a year ahead? I am not sure how it works I just know you can not get reservations for the next two weeks. They left a loophole however. If you get there before 6am when they "open" you can go right in. Myself and several thousand others did this today. It does prove that people can get up at 5am although it appears to do nothing to limit the crowds.

It gets light at 7 so I had 1.5 hours to wait. I should have gone back to sleep. People were parking with their cars running and lights on at the visitor center. Others decided to try and drive somewhere into the park. I went in a little way and found a view point that was a little off the road. Here you could see it was a clear night with some nice stars.

I thought off and on during the day about how to solve this problem. My answer is you need to remove roads and start to unpave the place. Right now anyone can see all kinds of cool stuff by just driving or walking less than one mile. If you had to hike 6-10 miles round trip it would be great. Small parking lots would be all that was needed and the desert would start to repair itself. 

But this is America you say. Yes. Do what we do with any other limited resource. Sell it to the highest bidder. That way the people who earned it can enjoy the park. And now you have some capital to work with. Now it becomes a simple play book. Fence the park and hire guards. Nothing says exclusive like a gated park. Then pay yourself enough for ten generations to live on and then some. After all it was your idea to exploit this particular resource. Of course you start a chain of exclusive pay parks.

Ok, back to some form of reality. I did get some peace for 3 hours on the one trail that they have that is long enough to lose the people. I will not talk about the Delicate Arch hike except to say this was a big mistake. Weather was great with a high of 65. More comfortable in the am. Plenty of arches. Plenty of rocks.