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

Got up early enough to make it into Petrified Forest National Park when the gates opened at 8:00. There was an almost solid cloud layer, so I wasn't too excited about going. I had my normal breakfast. There was some really nice orange clouds at sunrise around 7:15, and there were some breaks in the clouds, so I decided to go. I left at 8:00 in the Jeep and ...

Entered Petrified Forest National Park. (You may view a map of Petrified Forest National Park in PDF format.) I stopped around Mile 24 to photograph some of the badlands, then went to Blue Mesa where I spent the rest of the morning. I started photographing from some pull-offs along the road on the east side of the loop. The light wasn't too exciting and there were occasional snow flurries, but the badlands had interesting features (left). I also photographed a common raven that was hanging around (above). I had meant to take off the 1.4x tele-extender before I started photographing the raven, but forgot to do so. I photographed from some pull-offs along the road on the north side of the loop and the light was a little more interesting. On my way back to the RV, it started snowing steadily.

I returned to the RV around 10:40. I downloaded the images I took, then downselected them in iView. Hallie Larsen, a ranger at Petrified Forest National Park, responded to the email I had sent last night asking if there are any special days when the park is open before sunrise and/or after sunset to accommodate nature photographers. There aren't any, but sunset will occur in 2010 before the park closes from August 15 to September 6 and from November 6 to December 14, and about when the park closes from February 28 to March 3 and May 9 to 17.

I finished a blog entry and took it live. The snow storm had blown over and we were getting decent solar-electric power, so I went up on the roof of the RV to tilt the solar-electric panels to increase our solar-electric power. Based on the forecast for rain and snow this afternoon, we had planned to move over to a site with electricity, but now that we're getting good solar-electric power, we might not move.

I had lunch around 12:25, then made a batch of my chili. I downselected the images from today in Capture One (C1), then I processed images in Capture One (C1) by adjusting the exposure and white balance, where needed, and then converting the RAW files to TIFFs for images from Jasper through Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks. J left in the Jeep around 3:25 to go photograph in Petrified Forest National Park. I continued processing images and turned on the generator around 3:30 for an hour and a half because we were no longer getting much solar-electric power and J doesn't like the noise and fumes from the generator. After I finished processing images through the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, I read through some of the December 2009 Outdoor Photographer. J returned around 5:25. I processed two images for the blog, and there was some really nice light shortly before sunset.

We had dinner at 6:15 of my chili and a Greek-like salad.

After dinner, I started to work up a blog entry while having some Asbach Uralt. I read the Canon 1D Mk IV review at The Digital Picture, and the auto-focus performance is spectacular. He used all focus points to track a golden retriever running straight at the camera, and 18 of 21 images from a 10 fps burst were sharp!