Day two on the Arizona trip was to McDowell Mountain Park, east of Scottsdale. This is where the shop said that they took most of their guided rides to, so expectations were high. I had planned to get in 4 plus hours and this was the place to do it. This park had two separate trail systems, one a multiuse trail system, and the other a dedicated race, competion track. The competition track had three loops, sport, technical, and expert. All very fun, with a surprising lack of elevation gain or loss. But what they did have was flow. It never let up always turning or going up and down, very fun. But no extended climbs or descents, which to be honest was why I was there. So after about twenty miles, I rode another three miles up the road to the other trail system, called the Pemberton trail. The trailhead had a sign detailing all the trails in the Pemberton area, a 15 mile loop, with a ton of connector trails. At that point I had been riding almost 3 hours. So, I checked the water level in my camelbak and decided it was good to go. The first several miles were fun, rather unremarkable double track, but very scenic, brown sand and cactus. After a short climb the trail plateaued out, and was flat for a quit a while. This flat area was all rocks, there was no real line through the rocks you just rode over top of them. At first it was fun, then a bit of the novelty wore off. Soon they began to really mess with my head. The constant jarring had me wondering why is that adventure group taking people here, this is borderline awful. As the trail gradually brought me to those sentiments, the rocks quit. The trail returned to a rideable surface, and was enjoyable again, until I ran out of water. The last pull on the straw drew a vacuum on the pouch, and my ride. I was about halfway into this 15 mile loop and there was no turning back. Or so I thought. As soon as I thought I was pretty much doomed, I came across a connector trail that sent me back towards the trailhead. YEAH BOY turns out the trail was pretty much all downhill all the way to my car. No water, but it’s all good I didn’t really need to pedal. Epic ride, great scenery, but still no real elevation change for me to get my climb on. The trail had about the same elevation change as Palos, probably not even as much. My mouth is still dry from that day.