CA-AZ Trip, Day 4, Saguaro NP

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Photos from this day in Saguara

The photos from this day are all from the Saguaro National Park West. We met at our place after breakfast, then, following Jakub's suggestion, Barb & I followed the Edge to the park. By this time we knew that if we ever got behind the wrong black Edge we'd probably follow it anywhere. The first photo in the gallery was taken at 10:41am so the morning shoot certainly spilled over into the harsh afternoon light. All of the photos were taken somewhere along the Hohokam loop road (I believe). After a couple hours of roaming the trails and shooting what stopped us, Jakub had a suggestion for the afternoon. He wanted to go to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to try out his new 300mm lens on the birds there. Yvonne had a counter suggestion: drop Jakub at the museum, enjoy her afternoon at the posh resort, and return to find him for the sunset session. We opted to go that way and see what we find. First we found a great restaurant on the way, Mimi's Cafe. Apparently there are nearly 100 of these across the US, but this was our first experience and everything was superb. After dessert we had about an hour and a half before we were to meet Jakub and Yvonne where we left them.

We got to the museum before Yvonne and found Jakub who looked a bit exhausted. When Yvonne arrived refreshed he suggested we drive back to one of the spots we shot earlier to see if we could find a cactus in the sunset. We walked out to the high point of the trail where Barb & Yvonne found a bench while Jakub and I scurried about looking for the shot that didn't exist in that area. From earlier discussions we knew we were looking for the classic Arizona shot with a cactus in foreground and a beautiful Arizona sunset in the background. From this vantage point there was no cactus that was high enough to qualify, and we tried substituting some cholla. Eventually at least I got the beautiful background (photo 24) and later added a few cacti from the Phoenix session and sort of made what we hoped to find (photo 25). When the light left us we hurried back to the car to be sure to get through the gate before we were locked in. Jakub suggested we try the restaurant at their resort, and we were very happy to follow him once again. Man, those Jasinski's know how to travel, and we must give credit to Yvonne's planning abilities.

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