I still liked doing this trip. Even if it meant passing up a Lodore. Even considering everything that went wrong, and that was a lot. Ten days on the road. 2400 miles on the rental. Some new places, some nostalgia rolled in. Lucy came along for the first 4 days, then caught a cheapie one-way from Abq to Phx. Even that had issues.

Trip ran smoothly for the first two hours. Then a wild fire at Peridot closed HW 70 to Safford. Which forced us to take an additional 195 mile/3:15 hour detour through Tucson. That meant opening day went from 310 miles to 500 miles. We skipped the Catwalk Recreation Area. Then somehow we lost the keys to our rental trailer at the Frisco Lodging Company in Reserve, NM. Searching for the missing key was how I managed to cut my right hand. Which kept me from thinking too much about why my right leg was swollen, red, and quite painful. It was quite the day. Kudos to Lucy for keeping me upright.

Most of the rest of the trip went to plan. Excluding that a jet from Holloman AFB crashed just inside of the entrance to White Sands National Monument essentially closing the park. No entrance past the gift shop. So much for the day spent there. And then there was that issue when Lucy's plane lost an engine just prior to takeoff. Certainly better than after but still an issue. The leg problem continued and was eventually diagnosed as a clot. Did not throw an embolism so something went right. Skipped a long-planned hike to visit the John Tunstill kill site in Ruidoso. Growing up where I did you could not escape that whole Lincoln County war thing. Did manage to do El Morro and Onxy Bridge.

But no one likes to listen to a whiner.