Full moon over Silver Peak at sunrise...After breakfast I loaded up "Diamondback", my hybrid bike made, oddly enough, by Diamondback, and took off down Foothills Road. Foothills runs along the east side of the Chiricahuas starting in Portal and ends up in San Simon and the I-10 freeway, about 30 miles to the north. The first mile out of Portal is paved, so is the last 10, and the road in between is dirt. And unimproved. So when you're going on it with a bike, even one with front fork shock absorbers -- it's a mite bumpy, and you can careen out of control at any time. The low washes -- don't take this road after a rain -- are sandy, the washboard surface can literally jar your fillings lose -- and rattlesnakes on the road are always a possibility. Though like last time I took Foothills with my bike, I didn't see any, but looked at every branch and long stick on the road with quiet anxiety. But the scenery more than makes up for all the "inconveniences". Cave Creek Canyon, seen from this angle, is spectacular, set in a high-desert landscape of desert flora like yucca and agave --
And after the monsoons, the wildflowers are in abundance, and makes me want to get a book on desert wildflowers so I can ID them --
And look at that hillside full of cactus and other desert plants. Ocotillo grows all over the place here. There are stretches along the road that look like a desert botanical garden. I go about a mile north from the turnoff to Whitetail Canyon, then see a speck in the distance trailing dust behind it. It's a classic 20th-century phenomenon here, though I suppose it also happened in the 19th century, only with horses and wagons -- a lone vehicle trailing a cloud of dust that stretches for miles, in an otherwise empty landscape. And in this instance it takes about 15 minutes for the vehicle -- a truck, of course -- to reach me, and end my reverie in a swirling cloud of dirt, coughing and sputtering. The posted speed limit is 35, but most locals go 40mph -- which is a pretty good trick when you hit the low washes; I think vehicles have sailed in the air at those low spots, going at that speed. So I'm covered with dust, it's starting to get warm -- the temperature will eventually reach 90 that day -- and I've had just about enough jarring for the day, so I turn around and get back to Faranuf at 10:30. And take a nap. I still wake up around 1:30am -- today I "slept in", not getting out of bed until 2 -- so I need my nap during the day to function in the afternoon. I clean dust-covered Diamondback (and some mud; Foothills crosses Cave Creek, so at that point you spray water all over the place, which can be refreshing on a warm day) and relax in the afternoon, with nothing pressing to do except get ready for my friends Mark and Lori who are coming over for dinner. Their oven died on them, and this being where it is, the repair guy can't (or won't) come out until the latter part of October, so they're using my oven and we're having dinner together. But before that, I check up on the Big Bend Patchnose snake in Faranuf's back yard. And he's still there, curled up in his hole to beat the heat. Though I can't see his head, his body is quivering like a human's would when asleep and dreaming. What do snakes dream about? Lizards? Grasshoppers? What life will be like after John Boehner? He does eventually show his face --
And shows why he's called a Patchnose. So I provisionally call him "Patch", until I can think of something better. Lori and Mark then come over, we have quiche, salad, beer and wine -- not necessarily in that order -- out on the back deck, and end the evening with a warm breeze and (thankfully) not many bugs attracted to the outside light. Such is life when retired and living in Portal...
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