Chasing A Rainbow

I posted a shot on facebook of a double rainbow that I happened across over the weekend and figured I better dedicate a post to it on my photo blog for those of you interested in seeing more pics and hearing the story... so here goes:

I'm driving south on some county roads on Saturday evening and a few miles south of the small town of Oldham, SD I see one of the brightest rainbow legs I have ever seen. The clouds and rain were just leaving as the sun happened to be breaking through in the west. Naturally I stopped to get a shot... that first shot is below. You can see the rain in the upper left. (Click on each image for a larger file to view.)

I hop back in my vehicle and continue down the road. Somewhere near the county line of Kingsbury and Lake counties I see that the rainbow is getting bigger and taking shape. So I stop at a slough, rush to the edge of the road and scare a couple muskrats half to death as I try to frame up the shot. (Actually they scared me half to death as they loudly made their presence known when they left the shore and re-entered the water.)

Anyway, the shot below shows the rainbow forming. I almost like this shot better than the full double rainbow below it. I could tell I was standing under one of the "godlight shafts" that you sometimes see coming out of clouds like rays of light from heaven. It is tough to describe seeing it all unfold before your eyes and right there in front of you in living color. Overwhelming, humbling and thankful are a few words that come to mind. No photo does the real experience justice.

Full on double rainbow. What does it mean? Well it means to me that God makes promises that He keeps and He is good... all the time.

Soon the rainbow began to dissapate and so I headed back down the road. About 15 minutes later, the rainbow re-appeared at the back end of another fairly large rain cloud as the sun was very low and near setting. I stopped to get the shot below and tried to frame up the rainbow leg over a farm's prairie windmill.

Another 10 minutes down the road and I got another full rainbow. The last light of the sun gave a whole other mood to this one. Quite beautiful. You can see the shadow of my CRV in the field. It was still raining big drops so I had to shoot out of the window. Two full rainbows in the same evening. That is South Dakota in spring for you. Pretty cool!