Sunset monsoon photos

...so many things swimming around in my head since the last posting,
but before words, pictures. (click on them for a larger image)

And to preface the photos, a few words:
This afternoon my wife and I decided to drive up the Catalina Highway--the local cliché holds true: 'thirty miles, thirty degrees cooler.' We had a late-afternoon picnic in the shade of pines at 9000 feet, almost chilly in the 67-degree air. (That's the coolest we've been since we arrived here in early July!)

On the way down, just before the highway heads off the foothills, we stopped at a scenic overlook, since it was just about sunset...
...and this is what we saw, pretty enough, clouds to the SW of Tucson, over the Tucson Mountains:

To the left of the saguaros in the above photo, you can see where the clouds are a bit thicker.
Just a few minutes after taking that picture, those clouds began to leak a tiny stream of rain:

...and it grew into a few more wispy strands of a distant shower:
...and then it really began to pour:
Now that is indeed an 'isolated, localized' rainstorm, eh?We stuck around to watch the sunset-storm panorama for about a half-hour.

When I turned around, I was treated to this pastel-moon-rise:

...ahh, the desert sky can be like a drug...

...not that I would know...

...and just as we pulled out to drive back down into town, we noticed the scene below. (The photo's blurry since I was trying to snap the shot from the driver's seat before the clouds moved.)

...hmmm...gives the feeling of being watched, no?

Clouds and mountains in Arizona--never dull.