Weather is my mood indicator. I had been getting a little bored with the wall to wall sunshine that characterised March. April has brought relief in the form of unsettled, cloudy, moody days. Uncertainty is sometimes comforting.
Uncertainty also makes for good photos.
I-70 Highway between Rifle CO and Palisade CO. The clouds were moving fast through the valley, each wave alternating between heavy downpours and searing silver sunshine. I love the way the spray seems to highlight the journey of the cars:
The Bookcliffs are a sedimentary band of hills stretching 200 miles through western Colorado and Eastern Utah. The rain falling on our car was coating them in white, just a couple hundred feet above us. The foggy cloud seems to be smearing the snow onto the rock:
Looking south over Horsetheif Mesa and the Colorado river outside of Loma, Colorado. We has been surrounded by clouds all day, and finally the prongs of moisture started reaching down to the canyonlands. Somehow we managed to get back to the car without getting wet:
The grand valley stretches North towards the bookcliffs. Storms were rolling off the high Rockies all day and barrelling down the valley. After gaining the ridgeline on the ‘moore fun’ trail, we had a clear view from the mountains all the way to Utah:
We got lost. After following fingers of singletrack into the sagebrush for them to gradually rubbed off the map, we headed for the highway. Barbed wire fences and a huge embankment were overcome, followed by a two mile Time trial back into Colorado:
Sunshine means more when you know its not permanent: