I awoke early enough to go photograph sunrise, but the wind was blowing like crazy, so I went back to sleep.

We took it easy this morning and I had my normal breakfast. There were some nice clouds in the sky — much better than the prediction of "sunny and clear." I worked up a blog entry. We went over to say good bye to B&A who are leaving this morning. The wind had really died down, and it was quite nice out. We returned to the RV and I did some computer work. We packed up our computers and left in the Jeep around 10:00.

We went down the hill towards Twentynine Palms to go online through our Verizon Wireless USB sticks.

We returned to the RV around noon and I had lunch. Then I processed images for a stock submission. My blog editor (J), who had been taking a break for a couple of weeks, reviewed my recent posts and pointed out corrections. We left in the Jeep at 3:30.

We went to the Split Rock Picnic Area to photograph the small arch I had found near there. Unfortunately, a shadow from a nearby formation was already encroaching on the arch, so I wasn't able to take the picture I had wanted to. We explored the area, and had a great time photographing the formations with the nice clouds in the sky.

We returned to the Jumbo Rock Campground to photograph a tree and boulder. I had discovered it early on during our stay here, but couldn't find a great composition and the sky had always been boring too. This time, J discovered that by laying on the ground, it was possible to get the tree to arch over the boulder — a great juxtaposition (left)!

We left and headed to the Joshua tree grove to the west, and I went out to photograph one particular tree that was aligned nicely with a layered background (below left). The image was created from one RAW file processed twice (once for the sky and once for the foreground) and then combined in Photoshop. As I looked around the area, I saw that the same tree looked good from the other direction too (below right).

We returned to the RV around 6:20 and I started making dinner.

We had dinner around 6:40 of Contessa on the stove Orange Chicken. It's a quick-preparation meal all in one bag, but it's much more labor-intensive than the Bertolli meals because I had to first stir fry the chicken pieces, then add the veggies to the stir fry, then microwave the rice pouch while paying attention to the stir fry, then finally add the sauce to the stir fry. All the effort paid off though because we both enjoyed the meal.

After dinner, I downloaded the images I took today then downselected them in Capture One (C1). I processed three images for the blog, then went to bed early.