Goodbye Albuquerque, Hello Artesia

This is San Filipe de Neri Church in Old Town Albuquerque. Yet, another beautiful structure.

Albuquerque has rabbits and snakes decorating their highways. Highways 25 and 40 intersect almost in the downtown area.

Two beautiful totem poles (I think that is what you would call them even though they are not wood) create a gateway to Albuquerque on Highway 40. This is one of them.

Going from Albuquerque to Artesia was a long, long, long road with only three towns between the Highway 285 junction and Artesia which is about 140 miles. This is how those 140 miles looked. There was only one rest stop along the way and only a few places to even pull off. Whoa!

This is Vaughn, New Mexico which was about a quarter of the way south of the Highway 285 junction. This town was almost dead -- abandoned businesses and homes all along the highway.

There were about two trees between Vaughn and Roswell which is just before Artesia. This was one of them.

We were tired and happy to finally reach Artesia.