I got out of bed around 5:55, and there was nice color in the sky. I rushed to get ready and left by myself in the Jeep at 6:05.

I went to a tree I discovered in the Jumbo Rock Campground that would make a nice foreground, and by the time I got there the really nice pink/purple light on the western horizon was almost gone. I set up to shoot, and soon some really warm light started to illuminate the tree and nearby rocks (left) — cool! Later in the day, I realized that I had left the ISO set high this morning instead of returning it to my normal landscape setting of 100. :( After the sun rose up behind a dark band of clouds, I left and went to the Skull Rock parking area and headed out into the boulders to the north. I had a great time looking for compositions and found a few. I headed back to the Jeep after the sky started to fill with contrails.

I returned to the RV at 7:05, downloaded the images I took this morning, then processed four images from yesterday for the blog. I worked up a blog entry. J pointed out some whitetail antelope squirrels on a rock by our campsite. First it was two, then two more came to the rock, and it was fun to watch them. We left at 11:10 in the Jeep and headed into Twentynine Palms.

We went to the Beacon gas station at 11:35 to fill up the Jeep at $2.879/gal.

Went to the Carousel restaurant in Twentynine Palms around 11:45 for lunch with our friends G&L-O. I had hot pastrami on rye and J had a BLT with avocado. Our waitress was really friendly and energetic — it was unsettling.

Then we all went back to G&L-O's RV in the 29 Palms RV Resort at 1:05 to visit some more before they leave tomorrow. We said goodbye around 2:20, then went to the laundry room there to go online. The WiFi connection was too slow for me, so I used the Verizon Wireless Broadband signal. We left at 3:35.

We returned to the RV around 4:00, and B&A had arrived in their RV and set up camp in the next site over. I changed into cool weather photography clothes. We left with B in the Jeep around 4:20.

We went to the White Tank Campground to photograph the arch near there. The clouds were much more interesting than I was expecting, and J lent me her Canon EF 17-40mm f4 L USM lens so I could shoot wider than 24mm. After we finished with the arch, we explored the boulders a little, and I wished I had had the Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24 f2.8G to make the most of the wonderful clouds. Maybe Canon will release a 15-24 soon that they're rumored to be developing. While the Nikon AF-S Zoom Nikkor 14-24 f2.8G is tack sharp corner to corner, the Nikon G to Canon EF Adaptor by 16:9 that would be required to use it on a Canon body not only removes autofocus (not a big deal) but also removes camera-body aperture control — the aperture is set on on the adaptor ring which isn't very convenient.

We left around 5:50 and headed west towards the Joshua tree grove to the west of Jumbo Rock Campground in case the sky lit up like it did yesterday after the sun had set. Along the way, we saw some Joshua trees that were just beginning to bloom. :)
The sky lit up, so we quickly found some interesting Joshua trees to photograph. After the color faded, we started to pack up. I noticed that the clouds higher in the sky were starting to get some color, so we set up to photograph again. It was under these conditions that I got the best image of the evening. The image to the left was made from one RAW file processed twice to bring out the detail in the sky and the foreground and then combined in Photoshop.

We returned to the RV around 6:20.

We had dinner at 6:40 of J's Minestrone Soup that had been frozen, some Brie and Emmentaler Swiss from Trader Joe's, and some Italian bread. I also had a glass of Charles Shaw Merlot. We had some Betty-Crocker chocolate brownies with chocolate icing for dessert, and they were still very tasty.

After dinner, I downselected the images I took this afternoon in Capture One (C1), then selected three images for the blog. We went to bed early tonight.