[You may view a map of Arches National Park in PDF format.]

We awoke again before the 5:30 alarm and got out of bed around 5:25. I made instant coffee to go and J started a mug of tea steeping and we left in the Jeep around 5:53.

There were no clouds but it was calm — great for wildflower photography. :) I had two Clif Bars for breakfast while driving.

We entered Arches National Park and started heading up the hill into the park. We stopped to photograph the Dwarf Evening-Primrose near the road (left). It's a unique flower: it blooms white, and after it's pollinated by nocturnal insects it turns pink. While stopped there, I also photographed Scorpionweed, Stemless Woollybase, and Blackbrush. Prince's Plume was also blooming nearby, but by this time there was a light breeze and I couldn't figure out a good way to photograph them.

We continued heading into the park and stopped at Park Avenue. It was blowing like crazy, so I just got out to scout while J stayed in the car. Dwarf Lupine and Harriman's Yucca were blooming. We left and continued heading into the park.
We stopped just before reaching The Organ because a nice clump of Rough Mulesears was just begging to be photographed with The Organ in the background (left). My new Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5 L II lens was perfect for this shot. I used the shift motion to look up without tilting the camera up to keep the the towers from leaning and used the tilt motion to get the flowers and the tower in sharp focus. That's one of the improvements of the Mk II lens over the Mk I lens: the tilt and shift movements can be set to an arbitrary orientation with the Mk II wheras the tilt and shift movements are fixed (at 90° to each other from the factory) for the Mk I. Because I hadn't had the Mk I modified, I had been constrained to mostly using either the tilt or the shift motion for each exposure. The wind stopped periodically, so I just waited for the flowers to stop moving before taking my exposure.
We stopped in the Petrified Dunes area to photograph a blooming Whipple's Fishhook cactus (far left). While there, I also photographed Dwarf Lupine and Stevia Dusty-Maiden that was just starting to bloom (near left).
We went to the Windows area mainly to scout some more. Two tour busses were there and the place was crawling with people, so we just kept driving.

We took Willow Flats Road west from near Balanced Rock out of the park, and stopped to look at the theropod dinosaur tracks near the park boundary.

We returned to the RV around 10:45. I downloaded the images I took this morning and worked up a blog entry. J's daughter E called for Mother's Day.

I had lunch around noon then started to downselect images from this morning. J called her son J who had called for Mother's Day and had left a voice mail. I processed RAW images in Capture One (C1) from earlier this year to adjust exposure and white balance and then create TIFF files after assigning final file names. I took a half-hour nap around 5:00.

We had dinner around 6:35 of Bertolli Chicken Florentine & Farfalle.

After dinner, I called my mother for Mother's Day. I dislike the trappings of such holidays, but she appreciated the call. I did some computer work, then packed up the broken Sans Digital TowerStor TS2UT to return it for repair or replacement. Then I processed four images for the blog.