McDowell Mountain, February, 2019

McDowell Mountain Regional Park is part of the Maricopa County Park System. Several of their big regional parks have camping facilities with electric and water hookups. This is the third time we have been to McDowell Mountain.

It is a big park, almost 90,000 acres, 80 camp sites and 75 mikes of hiking and biking trails. Many of the trails are shared with horseback riders.

Every day here seems to be different.

Four Peaks to the East.

The Superstition Mountains to the South.

Rain and sun to the South East.

And McDowell Mountain to the West as the sun goes down.

The campsites here are spread out. We have a great campsite for 10 days and then move about 100 yds to another for 11 more. Both face pretty close to South with almost nothing in front of us for miles.

Our days have been sunny, to cloudy to an all day rain. The desert here is very green and lush.

We have been walking almost every day. I am getting out bike riding almost every day. The trails here are lots of fun. I got a new bike helmet, knee pads (from Susan) and more aggressive tires. We have been looking for elbow pads. I wear gloves and glasses too. I just haven’t reached the point where I will get the brightly colored biker wear.

Uphill from the campground toward McDowell Mountain the flowers are in full bloom. These orange poppies are all over, brilliant. There are lots of blue lupines too, they remind us of Texas Blue Bonnets.

In the afternoon the patio awning is nice. We added a sun shade last fall knowing we were coming here again. It makes a big difference. We got some inexpensive buckets at the Ace Hardware in Fountain Hills to hold the edge of the sun shade in place. We tried filling them with water. That worked for a while until it got pretty windy. We watered the nearby bushes and filled them with desert dirt (mostly gravel). They work well and nest and stack in a pretty small space.

We are here for a couple more weeks.

More later, Much Love,

Roger and Susan