It ain't the "Pro Leisure Tour" but it ain't bad.

We're outta town for the most of this week, hanging in Snotsdale, AZ, my old hometown, for my Dad's 70th birthday, with much of the sum-total of our extended family, my brother and his family, and the grandparents, my folks, too... even great-grandma's made an appearance or two (She had commitments to play bridge with the gals today).  The other Flagstaffricans (my other brother and his family) are in California at Disneyland, which is what we did last year for Spring Break.

Between meals we've been doing the sort of big-city things big-city folk do, chiefly: shopping, snacking, and finding our way to trailheads on the "edges of civilization" for short-but-fun mountain bike rides.

Yesterday we rode a set of new-to-me trails in the McDowell Sonoran Desert Preserve in far-north-Scottsdale (Gateway, Bell and some of Windgate pass) and I took a few pictures with my still-new-to-me camera phone.  They're terribly low-res, but if you use your imagination, they kinda look like they went through the Photoshop watercolor-filter.
On Thursday (tomorrow) my Scottsdale-brother and I are planning to head back up to Flag for about 24 hours to spend Friday skiing with our Flagstaff-brother.  It's been too many years since the three of us shared the chair together.  So it should be fun.  I might even take a few more pictures!

After that we jet back down to the Valley on Friday evening for yet another birthday party (one of the cousins) on Saturday afternoon and (hopefully) another creosote-scented ride in the desert, too!

I know: it ain't the "Pro Leisure Tour" but, ya know, it ain't bad...