Any of you who were reading my blog back in March know that I have been waiting to see a rainbow for a good long time. As I mentioned in my post of 3/24 when I was very frustrated at Florida's reluctant sky, I have been waiting to make the first entry in my "Rainbow Journal" that I received as a gift more than a year ago. There were no Rainbows in Florida, nor Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana despite many skies that looked promising over the last 12 weeks.
Finally - a rainbow. Right here in the West Texas desert where it was least expected. Considering that this area and certainly Big Bend National Park has been in a serious drought for the past two years and we had seen virtually no rain since arriving at the park, I did not expect this desert to give up a rain drop, never mind an actual rainbow. Boy was I happy to be wrong.
It happened last night when we were driving through the park on our way back to our place at Panther Junction after our once-a-week excursion to Alpine, TX (100 miles away) to do errands and buy groceries. The skies looked ominous for the last 40 miles of our drive and just after entering the park, we began to see lightening and finally, downpours on and off for a good period of time. In the desert, when the rains come, they quickly fill the dry riverbeds and "washes" and often result in flash flooding. Below is a photo we snapped (before the rainbow), as we pulled over to watch the riverbeds that had previously been bone dry fill with water and gush along at a furious pace.
After stopping to watch the water run, we got back in the van and about 10 minutes later noticed that the sun was starting to peek out through the clouds even though rain was still falling. Although I was looking around furiously for any hint of a rainbow, it was Andre who noticed the very first colors start to burst from the desert floor and we watched in awe as a complete rainbow slowly developed in a perfect arch across the desert floor. A second bow was starting form just above it when we snapped some of the photos. It was truly amazing - and certainly worth waiting for...
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