Moab in 2 days: 17 stops, and the 7 park stops with no stored hours

A Moab 2-day plan of 17 stops from the NomadSwipe app's deck: day one covers Arches and Main Street, day two the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands and an evening in town. Ten stops have stored hours and pass all seven weekdays. The seven park stops have none.

Disclosure: I built NomadSwipe (Android), and I wrote this guide. Ratings, review counts, addresses and opening hours are the values stored in the app's Moab place data, read on 7 November 2026. Rows were last updated on 19 April and 12 May 2026 (the deck is stored as two destination rows), so treat them as a snapshot.

The plan at a glance

• Day 1, Arches and Main Street: breakfast at Sweet Cravings Bakery + Bistro, the Moab Information Center, the Arches National Park card, the Upper Delicate Arch Viewpoint, Skyline Arch and Broken Arch, then lunch at Quesadilla Mobilla, two Main Street galleries and dinner at Desert Bistro.
• Day 2, Island in the Sky and the evening in town: breakfast at Bonjour Bakery & Café, the Mesa Arch Trailhead, the Green River Overlook and the White Rim Trail card, lunch at Sultan Mediterranean Grill, Rotary Park and dinner at the Trailhead Public House and Eatery.
• Hours: the 10 stops with stored hours work on every weekday. The 7 stops in the national park areas (all 4 on day one's Arches leg and all 3 on day two's Canyonlands leg) have no stored hours, so nothing here tells you when they open.
• Distance: this is a drive-heavy plan. By straight line between stored coordinates, day one adds up to about 57.3 km and day two to about 81.2 km, with legs of 22.05 km and 38.92 km back to town. These are not driving times.

A Moab deck where the headline sights have no hours

The Moab deck holds 371 cards, but only 182 sit inside a rough box around the town centre. By stored coordinates 35 are in the Arches area, 12 in the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands, 45 elsewhere in the Moab region and 97 far away. The deck has 106 sight cards in 9 stored categories, and 91 of them are in the Moab region, in 7 categories. Only 14 of the 106 sights are rated 4.0 or higher with at least 100 stored reviews. Two of those 14 are in Salt Lake City and in California, and of the other 12, only 4 have stored hours: Skydive Moab, Moab Jett, the Moab Information Center and Moab Giants. The other 8 are Arches National Park, the Mesa Arch Trailhead, the Green River Overlook, Skyline Arch, the Upper Delicate Arch Viewpoint, the White Rim Trail, Broken Arch and the Moab Backyard Theater, whose hours list is empty.

• The park stops are pins, not schedules. I include them because they are the most reviewed sights in the deck: the Arches National Park card has 12,244 stored reviews, more than 13 times the next sight in the Moab region. I cannot match them to a weekday, so I give no opening times for them.
• Entry fees. The National Park Service pages for Arches and Canyonlands list a standard private-vehicle entrance pass at $30 and an annual pass at $55 that admits one vehicle to both parks. The Canyonlands page says timed entry reservations are not required there; the Arches page does not say either way. Both pages read “Last updated: April 18, 2025” when I read them on 7 November 2026, so check the park's page before you go. I read no page on whether one standard pass covers both parks.
• Add your own pins. Anything you want that the deck lacks is yours to add on the map yourself.

Which stops can be tested against the week

I parsed the stored weekly hours of the 10 stops that have them with a script, set a suggested start time for each, and tested every weekday. A stop fails a day if its stored hours are closed, do not cover the start time, or leave less than one hour before closing. The 7 park stops have no stored hours, so the script cannot test them.

What binds is closing time and Sunday. Of the 82 in-town titles with stored hours, 20 are stored as closed on Sunday (24%), 8 on Tuesday, 6 on Saturday, 5 on Monday, 2 on Wednesday, 1 on Thursday and none on Friday. I chose meals that are open every day: Sweet Cravings is stored as open 8 AM to 3 PM, which sets the 8:00 start, and Quesadilla Mobilla as noon to 7 PM. Love Muffin Cafe (4.5 from 1,784 reviews) is stored as closed on Wednesday and Thursday, so I left it out; the same goes for the Moab Garage Co., closed on Tuesday. Hours also change with the season and on public holidays, so confirm before you go.

Day 1: Arches and Main Street

Day one goes north to Arches first and comes back to Main Street. By straight line between stored coordinates, the farthest pair, the Moab Information Center and Skyline Arch, is 22.71 km apart, and going stop to stop adds up to about 57.3 km. Two legs are long, 17.91 km from the information center to the Arches National Park card and 22.05 km from Broken Arch back to lunch. The last three legs, from lunch to the two galleries and on to dinner, are 0.29 km or less. I read no road source, so I give no travel times, and my start times do not allow for driving. Times below are my suggested start times.

1. 8:00, Sweet Cravings Bakery + Bistro: stored as a restaurant at 397 N Main St, 4.6 from 2,282 reviews, open 8 AM to 3 PM every day.
2. 9:00, Moab Information Center: stored as a tourist attraction at 25 E Center St, 4.6 from 517 reviews, open 8 AM to 5 PM every day. 0.68 km from breakfast.
3. 9:45, Arches National Park: stored as a park with the address "UT", 4.8 from 12,244 reviews, with no stored hours. 17.91 km from the information center.
4. 11:30, Upper Delicate Arch Viewpoint: stored as a tourist attraction at S Ranch Trail, 4.0 from 143 reviews, with no stored hours. 6.42 km from the park card. The Lower Delicate Arch Viewpoint is stored as 3.8 from 120 reviews, so it falls under my 4.0 line.
5. 13:00, Skyline Arch: stored as a tourist attraction at "Skyline Arch Trail, Castle Valley, UT", 4.4 from 151 reviews, with no stored hours. 8.77 km from the viewpoint.
6. 13:30, Broken Arch: stored as a tourist attraction with the address "Moab, UT", 4.5 from 127 reviews, with no stored hours. 1.12 km from Skyline Arch.
7. 15:00, Quesadilla Mobilla: stored as a restaurant at 39 W 100 N, 4.7 from 2,127 reviews, open noon to 7 PM every day. 22.05 km from Broken Arch.
8. 16:15, Lema's Kokopelli Gallery: stored as an art gallery at 70 N Main St, 4.5 from 39 reviews, open 9 AM to 8 PM every day. Only 0.07 km from lunch.
9. 16:45, Moab Made: stored as an art gallery at 82 N Main St, 4.6 from 35 reviews, open 9:30 AM to 7:30 PM every day. 0.03 km from Lema's.
10. 19:00, Desert Bistro: stored as a restaurant at 36 S 100 W, 4.6 from 2,284 reviews (a second card for the same restaurant has a different place ID and 2,275), open from 5 PM to 9:30 PM, and from 2 PM on Sunday. 0.29 km from Moab Made.

Day 2: Island in the Sky and the evening in town

Day two is one long out-and-back to the Island in the Sky district, then town. By straight line between stored coordinates the first leg, from the bakery to the Mesa Arch Trailhead, is 34.35 km, and the way back from the White Rim Trail card to lunch is 38.92 km. The three canyon legs are each 2.15 km or less. The farthest pair, the White Rim Trail card and Sultan Mediterranean Grill, is 38.92 km apart, and going stop to stop adds up to about 81.2 km. The centres of the two days are about 21.2 km apart. The afternoon after lunch is open on purpose, because the canyon leg and the drive back will take what they take. Times below are my suggested start times.

1. 7:30, Bonjour Bakery & Café: stored as a bakery at 59 S Main St, 4.5 from 189 reviews, open 7 AM to 9 PM every day.
2. 9:30, Mesa Arch Trailhead: stored as a tourist attraction with the address "Moab, UT 84532", 4.8 from 782 reviews, with no stored hours. 34.35 km from the bakery.
3. 11:00, Green River Overlook: stored as an observation point with the address "Moab, UT 84532", 4.6 from 175 reviews, with no stored hours. 2.15 km from the trailhead.
4. 11:45, White Rim Trail: stored as a tourist attraction, 4.9 from 134 reviews, with no stored hours. The card is a trail name pinned 1.93 km from the overlook, and I cannot tell from stored data what you can reach at that pin, so check it before you plan on it.
5. 14:30, Sultan Mediterranean Grill: stored as a restaurant at 574 N Main St, 4.5 from 1,150 reviews, open 11:30 AM to 9 PM every day. 38.92 km from the White Rim Trail card.
6. 17:15, Rotary Park: stored as a park at 680 Millcreek Dr, 4.7 from 50 reviews, open 5 AM to 11 PM every day. 2.27 km from lunch.
7. 18:30, Trailhead Public House and Eatery: stored as a restaurant at 11 N 100 E, 4.5 from 871 reviews, open 11:30 AM to 9 PM, and from 4 PM on Sunday. 1.61 km from Rotary Park.

Where the stored hours bind

These are the stops whose stored hours decide the start time.

What I left out, and why

• Cards far from Moab. 97 of the 371 cards fall outside the Moab region by stored coordinates, with latitudes from 26.93 to 47.68. 24 have a Colorado address, 9 Utah, 9 California and 8 New York, and none has a Moab address. They include Utah's Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City (4.1 from 1,159 reviews) and The Vintage Cocktail Lounge in Stanton, California (4.5 from 149 reviews), both stored as sights that meet my review line.
• Skydive Moab, Moab Giants and Hole 'N The Rock. All three have stored hours and reviews: Skydive Moab is rated 5.0 from 883 reviews, Moab Giants 4.1 from 459 and Hole 'N The Rock 3.8 from 637. By straight line from the Moab Information Center they are 26.8, 16.1 and 21.9 km away, so each needs its own detour. I know them only by their stored values.
• Moab Jett. Stored as a tourist attraction at 50 W 400 N, 4.8 from 675 reviews, open 8 AM to 7 PM except Tuesday, when it is stored as closed. It is a swap on any other day, 0.8 km from the information center.
• Gallery Moab, LCA. Stored as an art gallery at 63 S Main St, 4.7 from only 26 reviews, open noon to 6 PM from Tuesday to Saturday and noon to 3 PM on Sunday and Monday.
• The Arches National Park Visitor Center. Stored as a tourist attraction, with no rating or review count, open 9 AM to 4 PM every day. It is the only stored opening time for a card in the Arches box. It is 7.8 km from the information center by straight line, and I did not make it a stop because it has no reviews.
• Courthouse Towers and Tower of Babel. Both are in the Arches area, rated 4.5 and 4.3, but from 73 and 67 reviews, so they miss my 100-review line.
• Hotels. The 4 in-town hotel titles have no stored hours, so I skipped them for a day plan.

Getting around between the stops

• Each day is one out-and-back. Day one is Arches, then Main Street. Day two is the Island in the Sky district, then Main Street. The long legs are the ones to plan a drive for. I read no transit, shuttle or parking source, so I give no travel times, fares or parking advice.
• Straight lines understate the trip. Roads make each real leg longer than the straight-line figures above, and my start times leave out driving.
• In the app: each card shows its distance and opening status, and the list sorts by rating, distance or A to Z.

How I would swipe the Moab deck

I built NomadSwipe, so this is the method I would use, not a trip I already took. I would open the Moab deck and swipe right on the arches, overlooks and the places to eat, and left on the rest, because only 182 of its 371 cards are in town and 97 are not near Moab at all. I would drop any card with a Colorado or California address before saving it. Then I would open the map to see which saved places cluster. In this deck they fall into three groups: Main Street and the town centre, the arches north of town, and the canyon pins to the south-west. I took the arches and Main Street for day one and the canyon pins and Main Street for day two. A card with no stored hours is the part to check last, because the app cannot tell you when a park stop is open. NomadSwipe is Android only.

Planning another desert or Southwest city? See 2 days in Sedona, 2 days in Tucson, 2 days in Las Vegas or 2 days in Albuquerque. For tools, see the printable travel itinerary template, how to find things to do in a new city, how to save places for a trip, an app to plan a trip on a map or a travel swipe app.

Questions about this Moab plan

Can I follow this Moab plan on any day of the week?

For the stops that have stored hours, yes. I tested the 10 stops that have stored hours against every weekday, and each is stored as open at its suggested start time with at least one hour left before closing. The tightest spots are Sweet Cravings Bakery + Bistro, stored as closing at 3 PM, and the Moab Information Center, stored as closing at 5 PM. The 7 Arches and Canyonlands stops have no stored hours at all, so I could not test them. Sunday needs no swap: Desert Bistro is stored as opening at 2 PM and the Trailhead Public House at 4 PM, both before their dinner slots.

Do I need a car for this Moab plan?

I read no transit, shuttle or parking source, so I cannot say what is available. The plan is spread out. By straight line between stored coordinates, day one has a 17.91 km leg from the Moab Information Center to the Arches National Park card and a 22.05 km leg back to town, and day two has a 34.35 km leg to the Mesa Arch Trailhead and a 38.92 km leg back. Roads make real legs longer, so treat these as drives and check your own options.

Are Arches and Canyonlands inside the Moab deck?

Partly. Of the deck's 371 cards, 182 sit inside my box around Moab's town centre, 35 inside a box around Arches and 12 around the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands, by stored coordinates. 45 more are elsewhere in the Moab region and 97 are far away, from Colorado to California and New York. Sights in the two park areas have almost no stored hours: 1 of 32 in the Arches box and 0 of 12 in the Island in the Sky box.

What does it cost to enter Arches and Canyonlands?

I read the National Park Service fees pages for both parks on 7 November 2026. Each lists a standard private-vehicle entrance pass at $30 and an annual pass at $55 that admits one vehicle to Arches and Canyonlands. The Canyonlands page says timed entry reservations are not required to enter that park. Both pages are marked as last updated on 18 April 2025, and the Arches page says nothing about timed entry either way, so check the park's own page before you go.

Why are Skydive Moab, Moab Giants and Hole 'N The Rock not in the plan?

Each has stored hours and a review count, but they sit away from the two routes. By straight line from the Moab Information Center, Skydive Moab is 26.8 km away, Moab Giants 16.1 km and Hole 'N The Rock 21.9 km. Moab Giants is stored as closed on Wednesday, and Hole 'N The Rock, rated 3.8, as closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. They are swaps if you want one of them in place of a park stop.

How were the 17 stops chosen?

I picked cards by hand. For sights I used the Moab-region cards rated 4.0 or higher with at least 100 stored reviews where they fit a route: 8 of the 11 sight stops meet that line. Rotary Park (50 reviews), Lema's Kokopelli Gallery (39) and Moab Made (35) do not, and I kept them because they have stored hours and sit in town. The 6 meal stops are in-town restaurant and bakery cards rated 4.5 or higher with at least 189 stored reviews, each stored as open on every weekday at its suggested time.

Findings, method and sample

Sample and method. I read the NomadSwipe app's place data on 7 November 2026 with read-only queries. Moab is stored as two destination rows named Moab (country USA) that hold 371 cards: 229 last updated on 19 April 2026 and 142 on 12 May 2026. They have 300 distinct place IDs and 295 distinct titles (case-insensitive), because some venues, such as Desert Bistro, appear twice with different place IDs and review counts. I excluded destination rows with the country "Custom", which hold user-typed names. The deck is not limited to the town, so I sorted every card by stored coordinates into boxes I defined myself: town (latitude 38.54 to 38.60, longitude -109.58 to -109.50), Arches area (38.60 to 38.85, -109.66 to -109.45), Island in the Sky (38.30 to 38.50, -109.95 to -109.78), the rest of the Moab region (38.1 to 39.0, -110.2 to -109.0) and everything else. The boxes are rough, not official boundaries, and the Arches box also catches points along the highway north of town. "Sight" means a stored category of tourist attraction, park, art gallery, theater and concert hall, historic site, museum, garden, zoo or observation point; the deck has 9 of these. An empty stored hours list counts as no stored hours. I measured distance in a straight line between stored coordinates. Where a venue has two cards I used the newer one.

• By box, the 371 cards split into 182 in town, 35 in the Arches area, 12 in Island in the Sky, 45 elsewhere in the Moab region and 97 far away (26.93 to 47.68 degrees latitude; 24 with a Colorado address, 9 Utah, 9 California, 8 New York, 7 Nevada, 6 Washington, 5 Arizona, 5 Illinois and 24 spread over 17 other states and Washington, D.C.). None of the 97 has a Moab address.
• The deck has 106 sight cards (106 distinct titles) in 9 stored categories: tourist attraction (73), park (10), zoo (5), theater and concert hall (5), observation point (4), historic site (4), art gallery (3), museum (1) and garden (1). 91 are in the Moab region, in 7 categories; the zoo and garden cards are all far away. By box the 91 are 26 in town, 32 in the Arches area, 12 in Island in the Sky and 21 elsewhere.
• The 26 in-town sights come in five categories: tourist attraction (14), park (6), art gallery (3), theater and concert hall (2) and museum (1). The one museum card, the Moab Museum, has no rating, no review count and no stored hours, so the museum category is thin.
• Sight cards are thin on hours. Of the 106 sights, 33 have stored hours (31%) and 73 have none. In the Moab region 23 of 91 have hours: 14 of 26 in town, 1 of 32 in the Arches area (the unrated Arches National Park Visitor Center) and 0 of 12 in Island in the Sky. 43 of the 106 sights have a stored review count.
• 14 sights are rated 4.0 or higher with at least 100 stored reviews (the 100 line is mine, not a rule in the app): 3 in town, 4 in the Arches area, 3 in Island in the Sky, 2 elsewhere in the region and 2 far away. Only 4 of the 12 in the region have stored hours, and none of the 7 in the two park boxes does.
• The Arches National Park card has 12,244 stored reviews (4.8). The next most reviewed sight in the Moab region is Skydive Moab, with 883, so the park card has more than 13 times as many.
• Of the 119 in-town titles, 89 have a stored rating, 75 of those are rated 4.0 or higher (84%) and 46 are rated 4.5 or higher (52%). 63 are restaurants, cafes, bakeries, bars and breweries (53%), 26 are sights (22%) and 4 are hotels.
• 82 of the 119 in-town titles have stored weekly hours (69%). Of those, 20 show Sunday as closed (24%), 8 show Tuesday, 6 Saturday, 5 Monday, 2 Wednesday, 1 Thursday and none shows Friday. Sunday is the day to check first.
• I chose the 17 stops by hand: 11 sights (6 tourist attractions, 2 parks, 2 art galleries and 1 observation point), 5 restaurants and 1 bakery. 8 of the 11 sights meet the 4.0-rating, 100-review line. Rotary Park (50 reviews), Lema's Kokopelli Gallery (39) and Moab Made (35) do not; I kept them because they have stored hours and are in town. The 6 meal stops are rated 4.5 or higher with at least 189 reviews. 10 stops have stored hours and 7 do not, and the 7 are all sights.
• Using straight-line distance between stored coordinates, day one totals about 57.3 km (longest leg 22.05 km, farthest pair 22.71 km) and day two about 81.2 km (longest leg 38.92 km, farthest pair 38.92 km). The centres of the two days are about 21.2 km apart. These are not driving times.
• Weekday test: with a one-hour margin before closing, all 10 stops that have stored hours pass on all seven weekdays. The test script is mine and was run once on the stored values. The 7 stops with no stored hours were not tested.

Limits: the ratings, review counts and hours are stored values from 19 April and 12 May 2026 that may have changed since. The 7 park stops have no stored hours and are not weekday-tested, so only 4 of the 11 sight stops can be checked against a weekday. The suggested start times are mine and are checked only against stored hours; they do not allow for driving. The coordinate boxes are my own definition and were not checked card by card. The National Park Service fee pages were last updated on 18 April 2025 by their own stamp. I did not copy any third-party review text. Moab Jett, Moab Giants, Skydive Moab and Hole 'N The Rock are described only by their stored values.

Sources

• Place data: the NomadSwipe app's Moab places (names, categories, ratings, review counts, addresses, coordinates and weekly hours as stored), read 7 November 2026.
• National Park Service, Arches National Park fees and passes, read 7 November 2026 (page stamp: last updated April 18, 2025).
• National Park Service, Canyonlands National Park fees and passes, read 7 November 2026 (page stamp: last updated April 18, 2025).