Having cycled in the gusty winds – gusting upwards of 30 mph at times – the last couple of days, I opted instead to hike the dusty trail this Memorial Day morning. The trail in the neighborhood is always an interesting diversion so I once again headed that way. It’s also varied enough to make it a pretty darn good workout. Today was no exception.

When I say it’s the ‘dusty trail’ I mean it literally. It hasn’t rained in a couple weeks and even at that, it wasn’t much rain and temps have been pushing 100 in the last week. Add the winds and everything is really dry. Despite that, or perhaps because of that, these pink flowers I snapped a photo of seem to be thriving along the trail. Though I’ve tried to identify these pink flowers in the past, I’ve never come across what they’re called. The only place I see them growing is places it doesn’t seem like anything else would grow. Bare, dry ground of nothing more than limestone. I’m impressed by this hardy little plant that does so well in hot, dry weather.

I really like having this trail in the neighborhood, but it’s not just a walk in the park. I tried to illustrate that with my other photo here of one of the many climbs along the trail. It can be a little like hitting the Stairmaster. I routinely huff and puff when I go out there and with the heat and humidity today I was sweating like a fieldhand on a hot August day.

Perhaps because of the holiday, there were lots of people out on the trail with me today and I marveled at at least one of them: some guy that passed me running both coming and going. We looked to be of similar age. I really want to know how he does that?