Weekly Photo Challenge: Grand

High Desert Pastels at Sunset

Over Thanksgiving, we drove I-80 from San Jose to Central Wyoming, and back.  On our return trip, as the sun sat in the west, we crossed the northern Utah desert, descending to the Bonneville Salt Flats.  Had we come any earlier, or later, we would have missed the stunning magnificence and pastel simplicity of the last light playing on the clouds.  When I saw the Weekly Photo Challenge:  Grand, I thought immediately of those chance photos, and decided to offer them in my first photo challenge.

To the north, the Bonneville Salt Flats were already black.  The clouds caught the last of the sun light, as the earth bent the rays around, emphasizing the red end of the spectrum.

To the west, the sun was already behind the mountains near Wendover.  The pastel colors would have been the envy of a painter of water colors.  The pastels, in their simplicity, capture the scene and the mood.