Friday, January 6, 2012 (McDowell Mountain Regional Park, Fountain Hills, AZ)

We woke to another beautiful day...gotta love this weather!  After Steve did a little more work on the rubber seals on the sliders, we loaded my bike onto to the bike rack (which we had put on the back of the truck).  The front tire was flat again, so we have to take it into a bike shop for repair.

We took it to the Bike Garage in Fountain Hills...the fellow said that the tube had a thorn in it...hmmm...where could I have picked that up?  After trying to figure out where the last place was where we had ridden the bikes, we determined it was at Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood just south of Sedona.  He installed a “thorn resistant” tube and we were good to go...and it only cost $9.99 (+tax) including installation.

Once that was all taken care of, we drove to the Fountain and parked the truck.  We had wanted to take a walk in Fountain Park...a 1.25 mile walk around the Fountain...and today is the day.  We arrived at noon; just as the fountain started...it starts on the hour, every hour and runs for 15 minutes. 

Lots of birds in the park...we found out that they are Coots and they make a mess similar to the geese in our parks back in BC...

They have a lovely Veterans Memorial in the park...

After our walk, we headed home, had lunch and then loaded up the backpack, donned our bike helmets and were off to the trailhead of the Scenic Trail.  We decided to retrace our steps on the hike we took a few weeks back in which Steve lost the lens cap and polarized lens filter from his camera.  At the time that it happened, he thought that he had just lost the cap and since it could be easily (and cheaply) replaced, we weren’t going to go back.  But a day or two later he realized that the lens filter was also missing...and that costs over $100!  So as one last ditched attempt to find it (and get some exercise) we headed out.  Yeah...it was like looking for a needle in a haystack...and no, we didn’t find it...so, I guess we will be going to BestBuy sometime to purchase a replacement. 

We ended up walking the whole trail...once we got to the bench where Steve had last had the cap, it was closer to continue rather than go back the way we came.  Once back to the trailhead where our bikes were locked up, we rested for a bit before getting on our bikes and riding back to the trailer...which, by the way, was up hill all the way.  By the time we got home, we had biked 3 miles and hiked 5.85 miles in 3 hours. 

We had had quite an “exercise day” today...between our resistance exercises first thing this morning, our walk around Fountain Park and then our bike/hike...whew!  We’ll shed those pounds that crept on with our trip to Cabo and then Christmas...