I got out of bed around 6:20 when warm light started to hit the RV. I went outside to photograph the wildflowers near our campsite while J stayed in bed. The sky was clear and I photographed some Spectacle-Pod and Rough Mulesears. J got out of bed and got the hot water ready for her tea and my coffee. I went back inside the RV and made my instant coffee to go and we left in the Jeep around 7:32.

I had Clif Bars for breakfast as I drove.

We went to an area where I had photographed Claretcup cactus before, and they were blooming again now. :) That was one of the main things we wanted to photograph while here, and we had lots of fun. My favorite image of the Claretcup cactus from the morning was a detail of one of the blossoms (far left). We were photographing three different Claretcup cacti plants there for a long time before I saw some Anderson's Larkspur blooming there too. I usually find larkspur hard to photograph because it's such a complex flower and requires a lot of depth of field. I was quite pleased to capture the image near left.
I also discovered some Prairie Wild Onion blooming in the area, and enjoyed photographing them too (left). We finally finished photographing the flowers around 10:00! It was a very productive and fun morning, and my back was sore from bending over so much! There were also some nice puffy clouds in the sky by the time we left.

We drove into the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park so I could show J around. I think the Needles District is much more interesting than the Island In The Sky area, and after we had driven around a while, J agreed. We went to the Elephant Hill Trailhead, and the parking lot there was full — we forgot that it was a weekend. So, instead of hiking out into the formations with some wonderful puffy clouds, we left and headed back to the RV.

We returned to the RV around 12:05. I started downloading the images I took this morning then had lunch. I downselected the images from the morning then processed three images from yesterday for the blog.

We left around 3:40 in the Jeep to look for a good enough Verizon Wireless signal so we could go online. We only found one good enough for me to check voicemail and download weather forecasts on my Palm Treo, but not one good enough to go online through our USB sticks. :( It's always frustrating to drive around looking for internet access like that, especially when we never find it.
We returned to the RV around 4:15 . I processed a fourth image from yesterday for the blog then worked up a blog entry.

We had dinner around 6:00 of steak fajitas with fresh guacamole, chips, and salsa, and it was delicious!

After I did the dishes, we left in the Jeep around 6:50.

We went into Canyonlands National park, but then turned around because the puffy clouds were mostly behind us to the east.

We finally found some nice puffy clouds above the buttes and canyon walls and stopped to photograph them. We discovered some Claretcup cactus right there which was a perfect foreground (far left). As I was setting up to photograph it, I discovered lots of Prairie Wild Onion, including one with a really neat curling stem (near left). As soon as shadows started to fill in too much to continue photographing the Claretcup cactus with the butte and clouds, I switched to photographing the Prairie Wild Onion. I had time to take one exposure before the wind suddenly picked up and ended the flower macro photograph activity for the evening. Fortunately, the one exposure I made was a keeper. Usually, I take exposures at different f-stops so I can pick the one with the best depth of field, and if there's enough wind to make the flower move occasionally, I take multiple exposures at each f-stop to increase my chances of getting a sharp image.

We returned to the RV around 8:35. I downloaded the images I took this evening and then downselected them. I processed two images from today for the blog, and because there was lots of dust spots on them, I stopped processing images and cleaned my 1Ds Mk III sensor so it would be clean before photographing tomorrow. The sensor cleaning session was a disaster! I went though five Visible Dust Sensor Swabs and two Corner Swabs, and after several stages where the sensor was a lot worse than where I started, I finally stopped with only a minimal improvement from where I had started.