Midland TX

Today (2/28) was a travel day. We stopped at a rest area at Las Cruces where a huge roadrunner metal scupture overlooked the highway. We had seen this sculpture on a previous trip but didn’t remember where it was located. Later in the day we saw a real roadrunner while we were stopped for lunch. We crossed back into the Central time zone and spent the night at an RV park in Pecos, TX, that had the narrowest sites we’ve ever seen. With our slide rooms out, we were uncomfortably close to the adjacent RV. On Friday we drove to Midland, TX, and toured the Petroleum Museum which gave an excellent history of the petroleum industry of west Texas and its technology. Outside on the grounds were 2 working oil wells, modern drilling rig, old equipment and vehicles, and a variety of pumps. Also at the museum were marvelous paintings depicting scenes of the oil industry. In the same building was a gallery of Tom Lovell oil paintings showing life in west Texas. In an adjacent gallery were huge photographs showing the Rio Grande from its birth in NM and scenes along the way, ending in Mexico. We enjoyed seeing photos of the Big Bend area which we visited on a previous trip. We also visited the George W. Bush Childhood Home in Midland. Our tour was led by a mature, impeccably groomed staunch Republican lady originally from Kansas. She expressed the town’s pride in the Bush family and showing their home where 2 governors, 2 presidents, and a First Lady had lived for 4 years in the early 1950’s. It was a modest home with 3 bedrooms and one bathroom and had been furnished as much as possible as it was when the Bushes lived there though there was little that was original. The guide told us that it cost $1000 a roll to get the 1950’s wallpaper recreated.. Some of the rooms were not furnished but had exhibits and photographs in them. For dinner we got take-out beef brisket BBQ from K D’s BBQ, recommended by our tour guide. The dinner came with sliced raw onions and dill pickles, red and green sweet peppers, pinto beans, cole slaw, and sliced white bread. The tomato-based BBQ sauce was very sweet but had a strong flavor of black pepper – quite different from Georgia BBQ. We parked overnight at Wal-Mart where we shopped for supplies. To see more pictures click HERE: http://picasaweb.google.com/gharpercomcast/BushChildhoodHome