Full-Day Audio Driving Tour of Arches National Park





Description
The surreal beauty of Arches National Park awaits! Did you know that this one-of-a-kind park is home to the highest concentration of natural stone arches in the world? Yep! And you can experience the wonders of Arches on a self-guided audio tour. Visit famed arches like Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch, Double O Arch, and more! It’s your personal tour guide, in an app! You get all the benefits of a guided tour with the freedom to explore on your own terms. Here’s how it works - the app uses GPS to give you directions to popular stops in the park. Along the way, we’ll share stories about the places you’re visiting, give you important travel tips, and play music to keep you entertained the entire time. *Download the Shaka Guide app to access your purchased tours.*
Tour Options
Itinerary
Arches National Park’s 76,000 acres are home to the highest concentration of natural stone arches in the world, over 2,000, including America’s longest arch, Landscape Arch. The park attracts over 1.7 million visitors a year and once you see it for yourself, it’ll be easy to see why.
The Visitor Center has necessities like water, snacks, and restrooms. This is a good place to fill up your water and purchase a few snacks. There is no other place in the park that sells food and the only other place that has drinking water is all the way at the end of the road at Devils Garden.
At the Moab Fault viewpoint, you can see the result of enormous pressure that separated the area of the viewpoint with the cliff wall on the other side of the canyon.
City folks say you get the same feeling standing among the rock formations in Park Avenue that you do standing next to the towering skyscrapers in New York city.
La Sal means the salt in Spanish. The mountains got their name in 1776 when Spanish explorers thought the snowy peaks looked like giant piles of salt. The highest peak, Mount Peale, is over 12,000 feet around 3,600 meters high
Here you’ll find a series of huge sandstone rock formations like the Three Gossips, The Organ, and Sheep Rock.
This is a vast landscape of these sort of lumpy rock formations. It may not look like it at first, but they are actually sand dunes, like on the Sahara. More specifically though, these are petrified sand dunes, meaning that the sand actually solidified into rock around 200 million years ago.
Balanced Rock stands over 120 feet or 11 stories tall. This giant Hoodoo has a ball on top that appears to be perfectly balanced on the spire below.
This area features more than 30 different magnificent arches including The Windows, Turret Arch, and Double Arch, which was featured in the opening scenes of Indian Jones and the Last Crusade.
The Garden of Eden is a great place to wander around. This is an open terrain dotted with fins, windows, and miniature arches, or even arches still being formed. There's no designated trail so be sure you watch your step for any biocrust. You can find the owl rock just a short distance from the parking lot.
Pothole arch is unlike the rest of the arches you’ll see on the tour because, while those arches are vertical, this arch is horizontal.
From this high vantage point, you can see for miles and miles in several directions. To the north is Devil's Garden and the Fiery Furnace. To the south you can see Elephant Butte, the highest point in the park at 5,600 feet.
This is probably the most famous Arch in Arches National Park. In fact, it’s on the Utah state license plate! While Delicate Arch is certainly not one of the tallest in the park, this iconic formation has a special charm that has attracted people from all over the world.
If you don’t have time or don’t have a reservation to make the three-mile hike to Delicate Arch, you can still see the arch from two viewpoints. The trail to the lower viewpoint is just a short 100-foot walk from the parking lot. The second trail is to the upper viewpoint, about a half mile round trip.
The Salt Valley was once called the paradox formation because early geologists couldn’t determine how it was created. It’s a good thing you’ve got Shaka Guide to make everything clear.
This place got its name because the rocks here glow as if they're on fire when the sun is at the right angle. There is a permit-only hike through the Fiery Furnace but permits are limited and must be reserved online. We don’t recommend the hike on our tour due to its difficulty, but if you really want to hike it, you can make a reservation here.
Here you can walk a short distance to visit Sand Dune Arch, which includes a sort of sand pit that children of all ages like to play in. There’s a two-mile hike to Broken Arch and a rough road that will take you further to Tower Arch.
This large arch sits just above the horizon framing the sky as a wonderful window arch. No hiking is required, but if you want, just 10 minutes on foot will get you up close to the arch.
Walk around and check out the arches. The hike is short - about two miles - and it's well-worth it. You'll also find picnic tables and a restroom if you want to relax for a while. The most famous formation at the Devils Garden Trail is definitely the Landscape Arch, the longest arch in North America.
Highlights
What's included
Traveller Ratings
Important Information
- Wheelchair accessible
- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- Service animals allowed
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
- Travelers must have a smartphone compatible with the Shaka Guide app.
- The app must be downloaded and the tour redeemed before arrival.
- Strong Wi-Fi or cellular data is required to download the tour in advance.
- Location services (GPS) must be enabled on the device
- Travelers are responsible for securing any required entrance passes, reservations, or permits before starting
- No advance reservations needed as of 2026 — arrive before crowds (early morning or after 4 p.m.)
- Tour takes 4–6+ hours depending on how many hikes you do
- Two starting points on Highway 191 — one north, one south of the entrance
- Entrance fee: $30/vehicle, valid for 7 days
- Park is open 24 hours; Visitor Center hours vary by season (7:30 a.m.–6 p.m. in summer, 9 a.m.–4 p.m. in winter)
- No cell service or public Wi-Fi — download the tour on Wi-Fi before leaving your hotel
- All Shaka Guide tour roads are 2WD-friendly; some park roads require 4WD/high clearance
- Water is only available at the Visitor Center and Devil's Garden Campground — plan ahead
- Picnic area near Devil's Garden if you want to pack a lunch ••••••
Reviews(38)
Excellent driving audio tour through Arches NP. Lots of geological info combinied with great stories to enhance the experience. A terrific script presented with humor and sincerity. It’s a great day trip if you don’t plan to hike but a taste of what you can come back to if you want to experience Arches NP in greater depth ie hiking, biking, etc.
Aloha Nonny, We are absolutely thrilled to hear that you enjoyed rolling through Arches National Park with us. You also made a fantastic point—the tour is perfect for a relaxing day drive, but it also doubles as the ultimate scouting report for all the hiking and biking spots you might want to come back and conquer in greater depth later. Mahalo for letting us ride shotgun with you through the beautiful red rocks, and we can't wait to explore with you again on your next big adventure! Mahalo, Shaka Guide Support 🤙
Be sure you turn on all permissions to use this app. Including location Can't be just during use of app, but all the time. Otherwise it will not work, and they don't tell you that!!
Aloha Friend, Mahalo for sharing your feedback, and we're so sorry for the frustration with the setup. To help clarify, our tours work entirely offline and rely on your GPS location to automatically trigger the audio stories and directions at exactly the right moments. Because of how background tracking works on mobile devices, setting the location permission to "Always Allow" ensures the tour keeps playing smoothly even if your phone screen turns off or you switch to your camera. Because this tour was purchased through Viator, the quickest path to getting a helping hand or a refund is usually right through your Viator ticket. They're set up to help you with that right away. If you ever want to dive deeper into what happened, don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly at aloha@shakaguide.com. We’d truly be grateful for the opportunity to connect and see what we can do to make things right. Mahalo for letting us know, Shaka Guide Support
Really helpful audio guide for those who want to self-guide.
Aloha, That’s exactly the kind of trip Arches is good for. Go at your own pace, follow the road, and let the stories fill in what you’re seeing along the way. Glad the audio guide helped make the self-guided day easier. Mahalo for exploring with Shaka Guide 🤙
It was really great. We got fun facts on the rock formations and names mentioned. At one point, I said oh look at that it looks like elephants. And then the announcer said you’re coming up to the elephant parade. That was pretty neat. It was interesting to hear how the formations came to be. It’s amazing how it knew right where we were at, and when we were coming up to the next attraction and trailhead. I will definitely do this again now that I know what it’s all about. I would definitely recommend bringing a phone charger. My phone was charged, but my charger was not completely charged and I ended up with no phone at the end. It was fine because knew my way back.🤪
Excellent tour! Very easy to use and when you download it before you go in the park everything works perfectly without cell service which is spotty in the park. Great narration and the guide pointed out many interesting things that I would have missed without it. It was like having your own personal park guide riding in the car with you. Well worth it. Definitely will be buying more Shaka guides in the future. Wish I knew about them when we went to Yosemite a few years ago.
My 2 sisters and I had the most amazing time at the Natural Arches Park. The self guided app was informative and guided us through a wonderful experience. I would recommend to tour/hike the park early in the morning to beat the crowds. Bring plenty of water, snacks, sunscreen, hats, or walking sticks. Some hikes are vigorous. Most important, take your time to take in the natural beauty. We are returning next year for our annual sister getaway and hike the trails we missed. A beautiful & gorgeous breathtaking experience.😁👍🏽
Was not sure what to expect but this guide was totally worth it. Really easy to follow and had all the information etc needed for a self drive
Highly recommend this. It was an amazing trip and learning about all the history of the park was so cool. I love that he talks to you as if he was just a friend sitting in the backseat, pointing everything out to you. We loved it. It made our trip so much more exciting and educational.. We would've never known what we were really looking at had it been for Shaka Guide.
Got to use trip cash for the cost of this tour , but would have no regrets had I paid for it as well . Extremely easy to download the app and our tour . We found it so informative and helpful in making the most of our first visit to Arches N. P. It worked perfectly in the car as described. Recommend if you are like us and like to learn a bit more about the sights, not just look at them !
Very informative and worth the investment



