hurronnicane

Laid out across the trail at the top of a climb. Garter snake.

Pedernales Falls on one of the last cool days for the next five or six months….

The Texas Madrones are popping!

Morning visitor right outside the door.

Not a critter exactly but cool AF anyway. And yes, that is a Dog Vomit Slime Mold.

My wife just got an e-bike and I’m unsure if it needs to come in the house during this cold snap for the sake of its battery. Currently it is indoors but in an unheated storage space.

East Texas riding. A great change of pace from my typical Hill Country haunts.

Does anyone need some Yakima Roof Rack stuff? This is probably from the 90s and I think the bar diameters have changed, but it seems like someone could still get good use of it. I will probably drop it all off at YellowBike soon.

We started at the Lake One wilderness area access point, paddled to Lake Two, Lake Three, Knife Lake and Lake Four. I saw Basswood Lake on the map but we were not all that close to it. I have read a fair amount about the area in the last couple of months. Many fascinating stories, and I had so little knowledge about that part of the world until recently.

We just got back from the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota (Ely) near the Canadian border where we did a four-day canoe trip. It involved paddling across lakes with all our camping gear, food, etc. Some days there were multiple portages. The weather was great, the scenery spectacular. We saw Bald eagles every day, saw Trumpeter swans, saw (and heard!) Loons, watched beavers swimming past our campsite, saw various unidentified ducks… We had been talking about doing this for a couple of years and had almost decided that we had aged out of this adventure when my son caught wind of it and insisted that we go. It was fun to do with him and he is at an age where he can look forward to doing similar trips many more times. We hardly scratched the surface! More than a million acres of wilderness!

It didn’t make the trip. We flew this time around so I borrowed my future son-in-law’s bike.

Two days ago, on my 67th birthday, my daughter and I had another great ride that included another section of the Arizona Trail, a wonderfully-fun, flow trail (Full Sail), and a long downhill (Schultz Creek) to our shuttle. 20 miles, 1900 feet of climbing and 2500 feet of downhill fun! Afterwards we drove down to Oak Creek (Bootleggers) near Sedona for an amazing swim. A great birthday indeed!