It's going to be 82 today in Alamogordo

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It's 42 and overcast right now, limiting my desire to do much. It's supposed to get to 98 in Scottsdale today and be 80s all week in southern New Mexico. Sigh.

We will spend the majority of this trip in New Mexico, seeing most of the NPS sites we haven't gotten to yet. As I mentioned yesterday, we did some in 2004 while driving through on Route 66. Specifically, we visited Ft Union, Petroglyph, and Bandelier (where we first saw Abert's squirrels). We also spent a day in and around Santa Fe, disappointed that we couldn't tour the Los Alamos National Labs as Jeff did when he was younger and that the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was closed. We did see the Rattlesnake Museum, though, and played an unusual game of hide and seek with a little green snake!

On the way out of the state, we drove to El Malpais National Monument, which was beautiful. We had hoped to see El Morro, too, and found a tiny county road which connected the two. As we drove along with ruts one foot deep, watching the smoke from the wildfires not that far away, I was a bit concerned, but then the road ended at someone's metal gate and we had to turn around anyway. No El Morro, which means its on the itinerary for this time. Sunny and 80! Two days until we leave.

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