Bugs at McDowell

McDowell continues to be a superb place to ride.  The poppies and lupines and much of the yellow ground cover are turning a little brown, but it's still nice to be here.  The cactus bloom continues; it's kind of cool to be riding through a browning landscape and see a flash of color out of the corner of your eye.  The purples are just fluorescent they are so bright.

A pink buckhorn, we are still on the hunt for the less common fuscia.

Surrounded by all this beauty and all of these trails, there is a fly in the ointment.  Two nights ago we were invaded by this.  They're very small, and their goal in life seems to be to crawl up my nose or in my ears.  I ended up standing in the kitchen randomly swinging the Executioner,  listening to the pops as many of the bugs died.  Last night we did not open the door after dusk.

Today we are not riding.  My knees are feeling a little puffy after yesterday, which was a longer ride.  Also, today there is a cross country mountain bike race in the park.  They don't close any of the trails, so it's likely that racers and non-racers will be in proximity.  I am surprised that they are routing the racers up the steep part of the Bluff trail, which most people ride down.  Hopefully there will be no carnage.
We're going to make our way into the traffic hell that is Scottsdale this after noon to visit Jim's cousin.   It's amazing to me how dense the population is here.  My memories of the area are from 1972, and it's very different now.