On a clear day in California, you can see for miles across the Central Valley from the Sierra on the east to the coastal range on the west.
And on a clear night in Yosemite National Park, you can see a rainbow.
At night. Near both the upper and the lower falls. With the dark blue velvety, star-studded sky above, and lots of watery mist below ...
Yet only for a few hours of a very few nights during the full moon in springtime and sometimes early summer, will a bow appear in the moonlight.
Often referred to as a lunar rainbow or white rainbow, in the early 1900s John Muir wrote about the "elusive, ethereal moonbow" in his book, "The Yosemite":
"This grand arc of color, glowing in mild, shapely beauty in so weird and huge a chamber of night shadows, and amid the rush and roar and tumultuous dashing of this thunder-voiced fall, is one of the most impressive and most cheering of all the blessed mountain evangels."
For about three years now, Brent Gilstrap has been photographing moonbows in Yosemite.
Read the complete story at mercedsunstar.com