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Corridors · Vol. 022Byway

Three vistas, and just over a mile between them

An All-American Road in Arizona with three catalogued vistas, three named rocks within a mile of the route, and names that do not follow the distances.

Three lookouts are on the roster for the Red Rock Scenic Byway: Bell Rock Pathway / Vista, Yavapai Vista and Courthouse Vista. That is the whole list, and read by coordinates the whole list fits in a little over a mile. Yavapai Vista and Courthouse Vista are about a quarter of a mile apart. Bell Rock Pathway / Vista is the outlier, and it is still only 1.08 miles from the farther of the other two.

Three vistas in a mile and a bit. A road that offers this few stops is asking you to spend longer at each one.

The rocks nearby

Three named rocks sit within a mile of the route. Bell Rock, at 1,468 metres, is marked on the byway itself, less than a fifth of a mile from the road. Courthouse Butte, at 1,658 metres, is a detour of three quarters of a mile. Cathedral Rock, at 1,500 metres, is just under a mile off.

Courthouse Butte stands 190 metres taller than Bell Rock, and the two are only about six tenths of a mile apart in a straight line. Cathedral Rock is the loner of the three, more than two miles from either of the others.

The names do not follow the distances

Here is the odd part. Bell Rock Pathway / Vista is the only vista named for Bell Rock, and it is the farthest of the three from it, at 0.63 miles in a straight line. Yavapai Vista is closer, at half a mile. Courthouse Vista is closest of all, at 0.40 miles, which also puts it nearer to Bell Rock than to Courthouse Butte, 0.71 miles away.

That is not a mistake in the names. A name tells you what a stop is about. It does not promise how close you will be standing, and with vistas this close together, every one is within two thirds of a mile of the same rock.

What that makes the drive

Three stops in about a mile will not fill a day by count. They fill it by staying. With three named rocks inside a mile of the route and all three vistas close to Bell Rock, the choice at each pull-in is not how far to go next. It is how long to stay where you are.

The rock does not move. The light on it does, and that is the part worth waiting for.

Pick one of the three vistas, park, and stay put. Let the road go quiet behind you, and wait long enough to see the light move across the stone and the rock change with it.

The song · Vol. 022

Watch It Turn

On Byway
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