wave
I still cannot believe our luck: we won the lottery to visit the Wave. Or to be excruciatingly specific: a friend won it and let us join them. Up to 64 people are allowed to hike the Wave each day.
For a long time the Wave used to be visited only by people living in its vicinity. Occasionally a tourist would hear about it in a whispered conversation at a local bar. One of those outsiders turned to be Gogol Lobmayr, a German documentary filmmaker looking for interesting images to include in the Fascinating Nature 1996, a nonverbal landscape documentary. And that was the end of the secret; nowadays the Wave is so famous that, besides its own Wikipedia page, there are entire websites devoted solely to all things necessary to visit it from securing the permit to taking perfect photos.
Preparing for the trip I have read everything I found about the Wave including hundreds reviews, 90% of which were informationally useless 5 star: amazing, awesome, beautiful, best, enjoyable, epic, excellent, fabulous, fantastic, gorgeous, incredible, magical, magnificent, phenomenal, spectacular, stunning.
Some reviewers knock off a star or two because route was difficult to follow, hike was strenuous, it was hot, windy, raining, snowing, road to the trailhead was rough, winning the lottery takes years, elevation can affect you, briefing was not sufficient, too few permits are available, too many people are allowed. And my favorite from Penny J: For all the money from the lottery and admission fee the road should be paved so anyone can drive in. The restrooms could be cleaner and why can’t there be marked trails? Why are you making it so unnecessarily hard and stressful? There is no accounting for taste. Or expectations.
Commenters are not above nationalistic complaints: It seems a bit unfair that US citizens should "compete" on the same terms as international applicants.
The road is impassable when wet is the main reason people cancel their hard won permits. Or hire licensed guides with beat up terrain vehicles. It will not help when road turns into a river of mud, but may make a difference when it is merely slippery.
Plus you get a cute, if not necessarily accurate, demonstration how the Wave was formed, pointers where to lay to take a photo that shows you hanging by the fingertips and another one of dinosaur tracks too faint to find by the untrained eye.
Our luck continued: while it has been a very pleasant warm weather in early November, perfect for a desert hike, it has rained a couple days prior. The road was already dry and passable if bumpy. But remaining pools of water made for incredible reflections.
We took a different route on the way back with more amazing and interesting rock formations: the Second Wave, the Fatali's Boneyard, the dinosaur tracks.
I would like to say we will be back: the Wave is certainly worth multiple visits. On the other hand it feels inexcusably greedy to compete for a permit with people who have not seen it even once. We can take a different trail, there are lots of incredible rock formations in the area starting with the nearby Wire Pass slot canyon.