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Roads
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Monument Valley, UT
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9 min
The road to the buttes
Sixty miles of two-lane blacktop, and then the horizon stands up.
Mile
388
There is a stretch of highway in southern Utah where the road runs perfectly straight for miles and then, at the very end, the horizon stands up. Everyone stops here. We did too.
Sixty miles of blacktop
The approach is the best part. For an hour the buttes are a smudge on the windshield, then a line of teeth, then a wall. Distances lie in the desert. Something that looks ten minutes away is often forty.
We parked at the pull-out, stepped over a cattle guard and walked a mile toward the rock just to feel how small a person is next to it.
The road is the reason to come. The buttes are the reason to stop.
How to do it
Drive it early or late, never at noon. Fill the tank in the last town. Bring more water than seems sensible, and let someone know your route before the signal drops.
Words and route by Wren Hollis
Joshua Tree, CA
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The trees that keep time
Joshua trees grow about an inch a year. We sat with them until dark.
Amboy, CA
4 min
A sky with nothing in the way
No towns, no moon, and the Milky Way all the way down to the creosote.
Kingman, AZ
11 min
The last windmill on the ranch road
A fourth-generation rancher, a pump that still turns, and very little rain.
The Sunday Dispatch
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