Stripes.  Saturday, May 29, 2000.  A friend called me 2 weeks ago to tell me he broke up with his girlfriend, for whom he had a permit to go to Coyote Buttes.   I went in her place.   I spent yesterday at Coyote Buttes, leaving the trailhead at 0630 and with the help of another member of the hiking party found some new bacon, waves, fins and brains, which we explored for about two hours.   We continued on.   Approaching the sand dunes below the wave, we saw yellow composites blooming strongly.   We waited for lulls in the wind and shot, placing these wildflowers in the foreground with the buttes in the background. We got to the wave, ate lunch and laid on the cool sandstone, a bit sleepy, a bit warm.   Having drunk most of our water by 11 a.m., I led the party to the spring at the end of the canyon, where we found only a small 3 inch deep puddle of brackish water. Amazingly, we did filter about 10 liters of water without affecting the water level much--it tasted like rice water.   The 3 other hikers left to climb to the Top Rock area.   I waited about 4 hours at the spring in 95 degree heat keeping cool by dousing myself with water. As the sun dropped to the western rim of the canyon I hiked down to the place where I had "missed" a shot ten weeks earlier.  For another hour, I waited with my camera all set up, as the wind blew with gusts to 30 mph.   I let the setting sun throw the shadow of the mountain over the background and had two minutes to squeeze off three shots before the same mountain threw its shadow over my subject.   I finished at 5:30 p.m. and walked back to camp and capped off a fine day with a shower, east Indian food and a starlit night with shooting stars and satellites.