We’ve been to both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks back in May of 2017, and the question is whether a repeat visit would feel more like a “been there-done that” experience, or just as good as the original. It was definitely the latter.
There are two reasons why this visit lost nothing of the appeal of our first. First, there’s so much to do at these parks (at most any national park for that matter) that each visit can can provide a wealth of new experiences. For our visit to Arches, for example, we missed the hike to Landscape Arch back in 2017. So off we go and that experience alone was enough to make the visit worthwhile.
One has to wonder, “How does that dang thing stay up?” As it turns out, that’s exactly the same thing the Park Service wonders, which is why they’ve closed off access and don’t allow anyone near it. That sucker is definitely coming down soon, and not “soon” in “geological time,” “soon” like maybe next Thursday (one large slab fell off in 1991 and two more fell off in 1995).
The second reason visits to these parks never grows old is that even for the sights and scenes we’d done the first time, they’re somehow new and different when done again.
We’d no doubt driven by these buttes dozens of times, but this trip the scene just struck us and we pulled over, enjoying the sight as if it were the first time.
Same whole-new-experience with a hike out to Grand View Point Overlook:
And even ditto with the Shafer Trail Overlook:
Ditto with the Green River overlook:
Wendy and I talked about how it could be that something we’ve seen before can be “new” and “different” when we see it again. What? One obvious possibility is that our aging brains have forgotten what we’ve done and so as far our our neurons can make out, this really is brand new. The more likely alternative, though, is that there’s a difference between a memory of a place and a current encounter with the same place, and no matter how vivid the memory, it can never compare to a present experience. Recalling an experience can never be the same as having the experience, and for that reason our trips to Arches and Canyonlands were indeed brand new. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be back in a few years for a new experience again.