Skywatch Friday - Royal Gorge Bridge

We had a visitor in town last weekend and took her to the Royal Gorge Bridge, about an hour south of Colorado Springs. It's a suspension bridge (with other assorted attractions) over 1,000 feet above the Arkansas River, and for Skywatch Friday (please click on the link to see skies from around the world) I thought I'd post a couple of sky-themed photos I took while I was there. First is a shot looking up at one of the towers while walking on the bridge. You can see the main cables running from the top to the bottom of the photo, and the cables that suspend the bridge surface coming off that (they look very thin in this picture).

Next is a shot looking up at the whole bridge from down in the canyon, 1,000 feet below. The spot just below the bridge, on the right near the rocks, is the tram (gondola) that crosses the gorge - it's barely visible in this photo.

Finally, and completely unrelated, a couple of photographs of clouds from the last week.

Lots more photos to come from the Royal Gorge, including nice shots of the bridge, photos taken from the aerial tram, and several from the bottom of the gorge (reached by an incline railway).

And now to answer a couple of questions people asked in the comments from the last week or so.

In last week's Skywatch Fridy post, Kcalpesh asked if the first photo was shot with a wide angle lens. The answer is yes, the first and last photos in that post were both shot wide-angle, with a 10mm lens (since I have a DX-format sensor, that equates to approximately 15mm in standard film format). The first two shots in this post was also shot were also shot with that lens, the first at 10mm and the second at 20mm, which are the extreme ranges of the lens (a Sigma 10-20mm for Nikon mount).

Ann asked if we get a lot of thunderstorms. We get more thunderstorms here than almost anywhere else in North America. Many years we'll get 60 or more days with at least one storm. In the spring and summer, days usually start out sunny, and clouds will form over the mountains, particularly Pikes Peak. In the late afternoon they'll move off the mountains and over us, and by the evening it's typically clear again. In a good year you can almost set your watch by the thunderstorms, so people who have lived here a while don't set up their outdoor activities for late afternoon. I love thunderstorms, but could live without the violent weather they sometimes spawn (last summer we had 3 tornadoes within 15 miles of our house).

And finally EG Wow asked if we still have snow in our mountains. We certainly do, in fact two ski resorts are still open top-to-bottom. But it's melting quickly in the warm weather we're getting.