Up early – another beautiful day. We got to the station for the Sandia Mountain tram just a little after 9am. It was 78 degrees at the tram terminal (around 6,000 feet). We rode the car that holds 50 people 2 ½ miles up to the summit at 10,368 feet where the temp was a cool 59 and windy. The summit afforded beautiful views of the whole valley, but it was a bit hazy making it difficult to get good photos.The tram rides up the west side of the mountain and at the summit, the ski trails and lift are on the east side of the mountain. We decided not to walk any of the trails because at over 10k feet, hiking is difficult and jack hasn’t really gotten back all his stamina yet.
The tram operator was very informative and chatty on the return trip down the mountain explaining what her duties were in case of emergency that included climbing the ladder and getting out on top of the tram car to do any repair work or release the car if it had been stopped using the emergency switch. 
After the tram ride, we drove on to the museum area near Old Town (we had toured Old Town on a previous trip) to visit the natural History Museum. It lived up to it’s excellent reputation with more dinosaur fossils than we have ever seen in one place and a great planetarium show – well worth the stop. We ran out of time, so didn’t get a chance to visit the International Balloon Museum. Albuquerque is the site of the huge balloon festival in October – added to my bucket list.We headed west on I40 after lunch, passing through fabulous red mesa country in western New Mexico. We stopped for the night at a seedy campground just outside Holbrook, AZ. No TV and the WiFi wasn’t strong enough to read email.
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