How far is Arches National Park from Canyonlands National Park? Here's the quick answer if you are able to make this entire trip by car without stopping.
Nonstop drive: 81 miles or 130 km
Driving time: 3 hours, 15 minutes
Realistically, you'll probably want to add a buffer for rest stops, gas, or food along the way. To get a better idea of how long this trip would really be, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.
Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.
Flight distance: 33 miles or 53 km
Flight time: 34 minutes
The straight line flight distance is 48 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 2.5x of the flight distance.
Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/6th of the time it would take to drive.
This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination.
Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Arches National Park, and you want to stop on the way to explore. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting places along the way, or maybe eat at a great restaurant. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.
Road trip: 1 day of driving
With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.
Travel time: 3.5 hours on the road
Itinerary
Start at Canyonlands National Park.
Drive for about 1.5 hours, then stop at Moab and stay for about 1 hour.
Next, drive for another 30 minutes then stop at Arches National Park Visitor Center & Park Headquarters and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 41 minutes then stop at Balanced Rock and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 17 minutes then stop at Arches National Park and stay for 1 hour.
Finally, drive for about 5 minutes and arrive at Arches National Park.
To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:
Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Arches National Park. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Arches National Park. Click the button below to explore Arches National Park in detail.
The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Arches National Park to Canyonlands National Park, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Canyonlands National Park, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Canyonlands National Park!