Weekend Wanderings: Mostly Weather

I'm pretty much done with the photos from my May road trip/backpacking expedition to New Mexico. I'll finish up today with a few final shots from the drive home, most of them showing weather in action, because that's mostly what I stopped to take pictures of (and I did encounter some weather), and move on to summer hikes soon.

There were a lot of clouds and rain shafts on my way across Arizona and up into the Bears Ears National Monument. 

Climbing the Moki Dugway gave me some great views of both the weather and an amazing landscape (which if we don't do a lot of collective screaming my be destroyed forever since the Monument has been shrunken to exclude it).
 

 

A couple of days later, after my hikes at Bears Ears and Natural Bridges, I shot these photos in east central Oregon.

 

Those were rather large and fast-building thunderstorm clouds. The forecast suggested that the storm would be more to the west, so I chose to stay more east, taking US 395 to John Day. It was a scenic drive, but I didn't stay out of the weather, which caught me with some good showers and a bunch of booming thunder and lightning. Still, I reached John Day under dry skies, and detoured a bit to visit the John Day Fossil Beds.

It was pretty late in the day, and that storm seemed to be coming after me, so I opted for the 1-mile Island in Tine trail.

I hadn't gone far when the thunder began rumbling, and I really should have turned back then and there. But it was a short hike. I did feel like I wanted to run across the metal bridges, with the storm so close!

Made it to the top of the trail. 

A sucker hole produced a spot of sunlight as I trotted back to the car. Not an indication of the actual weather. 

Back at the car by a quarter to six, I changed into a dry shirt and started driving, heading for somewhere I could camp for the night. Before long, I found myself driving in one of the fiercest thunderstorm I've experienced (another was one afternoon last summer high in the Beartooth Mountains). There was no place to stop safely, no place to find shelter or buy dinner while I waited it out. I kept thinking I could drive out from under the storm. Finally I found a campground, and a hint of a cell signal, which led to the realization that I was driving right along the track of the storm. Going on wasn't going to help. I could only wait for it to pass, so that's what I did. I found an adequate dinner that didn't require cooking and didn't even have to get out of the car until the rain stopped!

It was very nice in the morning!

Building breakfast at sunrise, not far south of the Columbia River.

There was even a volcano visible in the West. I'm pretty sure it was Mt. Hood.

 It wasn't a bad way to end the trip! 

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2026 

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