Cloudcroft and Artesia

There is a place 4,000 miles above White Sands in Lincoln National Forest called Croudcroft.  This place is at the end of an old railroad that carried people up from the hot desert valley into the cool mountaintop climate.  The train stopped running in the 1940s but some of the trestles still remain and the tracks are now trails.

The railroad built a Lodge in 1922 at the top of the train tracks.  It is full of stories and antiques; supposed to be haunted by a chambermaid that disappeared long ago, named Rebecca.  We did not see a ghost but we had a delicious, expensive dinner in her restaurant, "Rebecca's."

On the other side of the Sacramento Mountains, on the way to Carlsbad, is Artesia, an oil and gas town.  This refinery is located at the end of Main Street.



It has an unnatural beauty.