On The Road Again - Day 7

256.5 miles 3 h 44 min Pecos TX to Las Cruces NM gained one hour
Day 6 - 400 miles 5.5 hrs Fort Worth TX to Pecos TX

Day 5 - 352 miles 5 hrs Little Rock AR to Fort Worth TX

Day 4 - 347 miles   5 hrs 20 mins Nashville TN to Little Rock AR

Day 3 - 218 miles / 351 km Lexington KY to Nashville TN gained one hour

Day 2 - 385 Miles - 620 Km  5 hours 51 mins Cranberry Township PA to Lexington KY

Day 1 - 298 Miles - 480 Km 4 hours 37 mins Toronto to Cranberry Township PA

Woke to the sounds of all the oil workers revving their engines to begin their work day around 6 AM. This is an old motel style with your parking spot outside your door. It was like sleeping on a highway for $141 a night!! The oil companies book up all the hotel rooms along I 20 from Midland to Pecos and this was pure luck that we even got a room.

Worker's boots outside room.

Complimentary breakfast was definitely better than that horrible excuse for dinner last night.
Some of the refinery trucks in the motel parking lot.

On the road around 9:30, we are not in a hurry as we only have to be in Las Vegas on Saturday.

FLAT!

Cute highway as you come through El Paso.

All kinds of strange equipment used by the refineries.

This is known as Dairy Row from El Paso to Las Cruces NM and more than 30,000 cows live in 11 farms located one after the other.
Dealing with the waste — so-called "manure management" — is the dairy industry's greatest environmental challenge.Everyday, an average cow produces six to seven gallons of milk and 18 gallons of manure. New Mexico has 300,000 milk cows. That totals 5.4 million gallons of manure in the state every day. It's enough to fill up nine Olympic-size pools. Every single day.

Gained an additional hour so we are now two hours earlier than at home.

Made a stop in Van Horn Texas. Gorgeous old hotel!

Arrived in Las Cruces in time for lunch at Cracker Barrel, our first visit this trip. Chicken pot pie for both of us.

Then we went for a drive and came across these murals.

Our destination was the Space Mural Museum. a collection of NASA knick-knacks and orphaned artifacts -- items that other institutions didn't much care about -- donated by space enthusiasts, or by astronauts who befriended the museum's owner, or by locals who work in the space industry (NASA's White Sands Test Facility is just up the road).

It catches your eye from the highway: a steel storage tank painted with scenes from the U.S. space program, circa 1960-1986. Smiling astronaut heroes, with iconic spacecraft and insignia from Mercury, Gemini. Apollo, and Space Shuttle missions, ring the 360-degree terrestrial cylinder.

I will post more close up photos for Monday Mural.

We checked into our hotel, The Ramada Palms, a lovely hotel, especially after last night and less expensive!! Our room.

Dinner in the hotel, skirt steak and quesadillas.