A windy cool day today with wind from the north and west. We took a short trip to Artesia and took some photos of the art work that they have downtown. The downtown area appears to have been completely restored to what I imagine it was some 50 or 75 years ago. The town was founded in 1905 according to the information we found. This is a big oil town and there is a big oil derrick and refinery on the east edge of town, maybe 2 blocks east of the main north/south highway of US285. That is the extent of town on the east side. The old/restored part of town is only a few blocks north and south of Main street, also highway US82 that goes to Cloudcrest and Alamogordo at 9000'. Further away from main street is the residential area with many very nice homes, all appear well cared for and maintained.
The photo is of a sculpture "Trail Boss" by Vic Payne. This is a much larger than life sculpture depicting a cowboy herding longhorn cattle. There are many other sculptures on Main street that are as interesting as this one.
We decided to go east of town on US82 toward Hobbs, but took a side road down through the oil wells to the south. About half of them were pumping and we saw several tanker semis loading crude from large tanks that held the oil being pumped from surrounding wells. Every mile or so we would cross a cattle gate and a fence would go in either direction to maintain the cattle in that section. We did not see any cattle, but saw 3 or 4 that had been hit on the road that apparently had been there for some time. Nice to know you can raise cattle on the range and pump oil at the same time. What a great way to make money. We traveled on south to Illinois Camp. This appears to be only a pumping station for the oil and gas that they accumulate. There were not any homes or indication of civilization other than some well crews drilling a few oil wells and vehicles going up and down the road.
We finally arrived at Carlsbad and toured the town, stopped at Sonic and got a strawberry shake and headed north on US285 to Lakewood and The Ranch.