Ominous Northern Arizona skies

Cloudy skies followed us off the plateau and back.  A fellow employee and I went to the public California Condor release on the third Saturday of September at Vermilion Cliffs.  Had to leave the North Rim early under dark gray onimous skies.

Clouds hung over the Vermilion Cliffs.  But the Condors don’t care and would fly anyway.

But it was even more ominous looking back up on the Kaibab Plateau and coming our way.

The Condor release occurred at 11am and all three juveniles came out of the enclosure within 10 minutes.  Those tiny specks are condors.  Good thing the sky was gray or they would have been impossible to see.  Remember they have a 9 1/2 foot wingspan.

Good thing as moments later the wind kicked up, rain came and the crowd dispersed in a hurry.

But rather than head right back home we decided to drive to the Navajo Bridge further east and maybe see more condors as they tend to roost under the bridge.  The rain followed us past Vermilion Cliffs.

Must have rained pretty good upstream into the Paria as swirls of silt mixed with the green/blue of the Colorado River.  We saw no condors at the bridge.

We continued to Lee’s Ferry under these ominous skies.

Which doesn’t make any difference to the folks launching on the Colorado for their adventures rafting the river.

Nor did it for us as we explored the ruins at Lee’s Ferry.

As we headed back the sky still looked ominous and it rained most of the way home.

With low clouds hanging over the canyon through sunset.

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