The Sky's Celebration, Coyote Buttes Wilderness, Arizona

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The sky must certainly have been celebrating when this image was captured. Clouds from a clearing storm of dramatic proportion frame the cross-bedded sandstone hills of Arizona's Coyote Buttes Wilderness. This 112,500 acre (455 km2) desert wilderness is composed of broad plateaus, tall escarpments, deep canyons and bizarre sandstone formations. It lies mostly within the 294,000 acre (1,189 km²) Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, which adjoins the 1,217,280 acre (4972 km²) Grand Canyon National Park. Together these lands form what is among the most beautiful and amazing places in North America, until something worth mining is found under it.

This image, captured in 2009, was originally displayed on this website in monochrome. Like many others, it was completely reprocessed from the RAW image file for the current (mid-2026) website update.