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

We got up leisurely this morning. I made instant coffee to go and J started a mug of tea steeping, and we left in the Jeep around 7:35.

I had Clif Bars for breakfast while driving.

We entered the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park and went straight to Campground A to photograph the Yellow Bee Plant we found two days ago. The flowers weren't nearly as interesting to photograph as I thought they'd be, but I enjoyed photographing a Prairie Sunflower (left) that was nearby. I also enjoyed photographing a Showy Four-O'Clock blossom (below left).

We left the campground and drove towards the Elephant Hill Trailhead. We stopped to photograph the Lavender Evening-Primrose we found two days ago (below right). You might think "lavender" is an odd name for a yellow flower, but the flowers fade to pink or lavender when they dry.

We exited the park and wet to the Needles Outpost to see if they had WiFi — they didn't. J was getting antsy to go online because she had some eBay auctions ending today. I was able to get a Verizon Wireless signal so that I could check voicemail and weather on my Palm Treo, but we couldn't go online through our USB sticks.

We returned to the RV around 11:40. I downloaded the images I took then did a quick downselect in iView. I used iView for the initial pass because there had been a strong enough breeze that some of the flowers never really became totally still, and iView would let me throw away the images that were definitely blurry a lot faster than using Capture One (C1).

I had lunch around noon and read through more of the May Outdoor Photographer. Then I downselected the images from this morning in Capture One (C1). I processed three images from yesterday for the blog and J took a nap. I worked up a blog entry, and the nice puffy clouds that had been forming had moved off to the east — the wrong direction for interesting photography in the park later today. I took a nap too.

We had dinner around 5:40 of Bertolli Shrimp Scampi & Linguini and a salad.

We left around 6:20 in the Jeep.

We explored the canyon along Lockhart Road beyond the Hamburger Rock Campground. The rock formations were nice to look at but not particularly photogenic. I thoroughly enjoyed photographing a cooperative Colorado Side-Blotched Lizard (below left) there though. The lizards are about 4 inches (10cm) long, and to give me some working distance I used my Canon EOS 1D Mk III with a 1.3 magnification factor and a 1.4x tele-extender on my 180 Macro. We went as far as Indian Creek, then turned around and headed out towards Hamburger Rock. We stopped to photograph some Silvery Sophora, Yellow Cryptanth, and Dwarf Lupine (below right). The wind had stopped, so it was easy to photograph the flowers. However, the biting gnats were annoying. Yes, the image of the Dwarf Lupine (below right) was in fact a 3 second exposure as the sun had set by then and it was getting dark. The composition I photographed after that required a 10-second exposure at f11 — it was definitely dark by then.


We returned to the RV around 8:40. I downloaded the images I took this evening and downselected them before going to bed.