Camille's Arches

My favorite rocks are the ones with holes in them! My love for arches began during the two and a half years that our family lived in Moab, Utah. We spent many hours every week hiking to arches and other beautiful sites in this red-rock wonderland. Whenever I visit Moab now, I always feel like I'm coming home. This website is a collection of arches that I have visited from all over the world. View this site as a webpage to see the full list of arches in the sidebar!

Saturday, November 7, 2026

Grass Creek Arch

My friend told me about an arch that was located about 26 miles past Thermopolis on the way to Cody, Wyoming along Highway 120. He gave me a brief description of how to find out, and so today we set out to find the arch and we did! I can't believe we didn't notice it before! And on the way back from Cody, we were watching for it again and we saw a second arch as well. I don't know how many times I have driven the road from our home in Lander, Wyoming to Cody, Wyoming, and I had no idea that I was passing two arches that are completely visible from the road. This post focuses on the Grass Creek Arch, as I've called it, because of its vicinity to Grass Creek.

I turned on my GPS as we were leaving Thermopolis so that I could save the GPS coordinates of the arch, but unfortunately my GPS froze in Thermopolis and did not track us to the arch. So I'll give you the directions that I used to find the arch, and then hopefully the next time I return to the arch my GPS will work better to grab some accurate coordinates. There is not cell service at the arch, so when I tried to save it on google maps it didn't have my location in the correct place.

As you are leaving Thermopolis heading towards Cody, reset your mileage so that you can watch your mileage until you get close to 26 miles. When you see a sign for Grass Creek, the arch is very soon after that on the right. There are a lot of small holes and tiny caves in the rock ledge next to the road and if you look closely you can see the arch opening from the road. The arch is very close to the road and easy to walk to. In fact, we found trash in the vicinity that had been left by others, and we also unfortunately found initials carved into the rock inside the arch.

I was not in hiking clothes, so it was a bit tricky to climb into the arch, but it is actually a very accessible arch. There are not any fences or anything separating you from the arch and the road. This arch is about equal distance between Thermopolis and Meeteetse. It is also approximately 4 miles before the turn-off to Worland. You can watch a video of the arch here: Grass Creek Arch

The view of the arch from the road

It appears that it might only be a cave, but you can see the other opening on the left side of this photo

This is the surrounding area -- look at all of those huge wasp nests!

so many tiny pockets and openings in the rock

looking towards the arch (left side of photo), and the huge nests in the upper right of this photo

The arch

I walked back along the highway to get a photo of what the arch and surrounding area looks like as you're headed towards Cody.

This is where we parked while we ventured under the arch. The arch is in about the center of this photo.

Others have been in the area and left trash

We climbed up near the ledge to get inside the arch

Now you can see the other arch opening

under the arch, looking out towards the highway

standing under the arch, this is how close it is to Highway 120

My husband under the arch

the other opening

under the arch - it reminded me of a much smaller Moonshine Arch (Vernal, Utah)

James peeking through the small opening

someone has carved their initials into the rock

I am 5'2" so this gives you an idea of how high this arch is

This is what the underside of the arch looks like

inside the arch

these tiny indentations are all over the inside of the arch

looking out the smaller opening

heading out of the arch

This is the area above the arch

View from the arch of my husband on the road

That's me in the smaller opening - my husband took the photo from inside the arch

looking through the small opening into the arch

a small indentation above the arch

If I'd been wearing hiking shoes and clothes it would have been really easy to climb on top of the arch

the area above the arch

one more look through the small opening before I climbed back down

I was definitely not wearing the best shoes to be climbing around in the dirt and on slippery rock! But I definitely could have climbed around easily in my hiking shoes. I managed to get my skirt pretty dirty in the process!