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

We got up a little later than usual, and J wanted to stay in the RV this morning. I prepared a mug of coffee to go and left by myself in the Jeep around 8:25.

I had Clif Bars for breakfast while driving. The mostly solid, but thin, cloud layer would make for some good shooting conditions down in the gorges.

I headed down the Scenic Drive and went to the Capitol Gorge Trailhead around 9:20. I photographed some cooperative Cliff Chipmunks there (below left), then started hiking towards The Tanks. I stopped several times to photograph interesting things on the side of the gorge, including the white rock caught in the sandstone pocket (below right). The image was created from one capture that I processed three times to get detail in the bright and dark ares of the scene and then combined by hand in Photoshop.


I headed up the side of the gorge at the sign for The Tanks. When the trail leveled out, I missed a turn and kept following other cairns. Pretty soon the trail petered out and I did some exploring to find the real trail or The Tanks themselves. I saw two other hikers way below, and pretty soon I heard one say something like "here are The Tanks." I headed back down the hill to take up the trail to where the other hikers were, and pretty soon I reached The Tanks too. They're a series of water pockets in a side channel of Capitol Gorge, and because it had been raining so much lately, they were filled with water. The solid cloud layer wasn't so good for photographng them, but I got an acceptable shot by only including the sky in the reflection of one pool (left). I used a polarizer to maximize the reflection in the water. Mid morning is the time to photograph The Tanks, preferable with a more interesting sky than what I had.
I returned to the Jeep then started heading back to the RV.

I stopped at the Gifford House and picked up another Mixed Berry Pie.

I returned to the RV around 12:50 and had lunch. J left in the Jeep around 1:55 and I started to drain the coffee concentrate from the Toddy Cold Brew System. I worked up a blog entry, then turned on the generator around 2:50 to take advantage of the "free" 110VAC to process some images for a stock submission. When I process images through Photoshop for a stock submission, I run two external 3.5-inch hard drives in a RAID(0) configuration and my external monitor, and that uses up a lot more juice than just my MacBook Pro. I turned off the generator around 4:00 when the clouds broke and we were getting lots of solar-electric power, and I switched to downselecting images from this morning in Capture One (C1) — something I do using only my MacBook Pro. I went back to processing images for a stock submission and turned on the generator around 5:05 when the clouds became solid again and we were no longer getting much solar-electric power. I turned off the generator around 5:30 just before J returned from an afternoon of photographing by herself. We left in the Jeep around 5:35.

J took me down a dirt road she had explored, and we stopped to photograph some cascades on Sulfur Creek (left).

We returned to the RV around 6:55 and I stowed the solar-electric panels because it was only drizzling occasionally and the forecast was for steady rain in the morning when we planned to leave.

We had dinner around 7:20 of pasta with leftover sauce and some Texas Toast.
I finished draining the Toddy Cold Brew System and I got about 50 fl oz (1.47l) of coffee concenrate. It had quite a different aroma than usual because it was mostly Starbucks French Roast instead of my usual LavAzza Gran Filtro Dark Roast coffee, and I hope it'll taste OK. Then I heated up the Mixed Berry Pie and we had dessert. The pie was even better warmed up! I was able to get a decent internet connection through the Verizon Wireless National Access signal, and I uploaded the blog entry. Then I processed four images for the blog before going to bed.