Hotels and motels

Cheap Hotels/Motels: Under $70

Recommended: Motel 6
They're not fancy, but what do you want for the least possible money? They're the lowest-priced hotel I would consider staying at, and run anywhere from $30 to $75 a night (average about $40), depending mostly on location and to a lesser extent on date. There are very few room amenities– maybe cable television– but most of them do have outdoor pools. For the most part, the Motel 6s we stayed in were clean and comfortable. One of them had a strong mildew smell, but when we asked for another room they were happy to accomodate us, and the new room was fine. It turned out the mildew room had a malfunctioning air conditioner.
also recommended: the Century 21 motel in Las Cruces-- very nice for $30

NOT recommended: Local hotels; Super 8
I only put Super 8 in here because it advertises itself as a discount chain. We found Super 8 consistently cost $20 more per night than Motel 6, and offered almost no improvement to justify the higher price. I don't advise local (non-national chain) hotels in this price range because you simply don't know what you might get. Aside from the Century 21 motel in Las Cruces, almost all of the other cheap independent motels we saw were extremely nasty. Regional chains aren't much better; for example, the Scottish Inn we stayed at was slightly damp all over, especially the floor, and you had to leave a deposit with the desk to get your phone turned on. Good thing our room didn't catch fire or we'd have roasted to death while furiously dialing 911 and wondering why nobody answered. If you find yourself having to seek out an independent motel, ask to see a room before you put down your credit card. You might discover that you'd rather sleep in your car.

Medium priced hotels: $70 - $120

Recommended: Holiday Inn Express; La Quinta
The "Express" line from Holiday Inn is all new, so they're all sparkly clean and fresh. In addition, most or all of them offer rooms with high speed internet access. But my favorite thing is the ones that have indoor pools open 24 hours. (I think they all have pools, but they're not all 24 hours.) At $60 to $100 per night, we couldn't afford to stay in one every night (and while widespread, they're not universal, the way Super 8s seem to be), but if I were heading out for just a few days, this is where I'd stay. La Quinta is from the Comfort Inn/Sleep Inn etc family, and it's a little pricier and a fair amount nicer than those places. We didn't stay in that many of them, but the few we stayed in were quite clean.

NOT recommended: Best Western
I hate to do this to them, because some Best Westerns are perfectly nice. However, many of them are definitely sub-par for the price range ($70-$120). You'll never find a really disgusting Best Western, but some of them can be kind of dingy, or have things broken, which is just unacceptable for $80. Overall I'd say they're not so much unpleasant as they are overpriced.

Expensive hotels: over $120

Did I mention that we spend about 80 nights in hotels? What are we, made out of money? If you can afford to drop this kind of money on a hotel, maybe you can ask your butler for a recommendation, Lord Fauntleroy.

Advice on reservations

It's amazing how many entire towns sell out of hotel rooms for no apparent reason. It didn't used to be this way. When I drove cross country, twice, in the 90's, I never once called ahead for a reservation and I was never turned away because a hotel was full. Well, those days are over. If you have a general idea of where you'll end up at the end of the day, especially on Friday and Saturday, find a hotel at your destination and call ahead that morning. It will make a HUGE difference in how much time you spend driving around, swearing, while you look for a room in some rinky-dink town you've never been in before and will never see again. We managed this with the use of StreetAtlas (from DeLorme, and no, I don't work for them, nor do I know anyone who does, and they have not given me any money). It's a mapping software that also shows "points of interest" (which you can define from a long list) along the way, including motels, and more importantly, including the phone numbers for those motels. But when you call, make sure you have the right hotel; the only problem we had with StreetAtlas was the time a hotel in Price, Utah, showed the phone number for the hotel in Green River, Utah, a fact we discovered too late. (If you're willing to accept a smoking room, and don't mind a twin bed, calling ahead is less critical.) And most chains will let you cancel up to 6 pm or so on the day of arrival, if your plans change. One other thing to note is that hotels near airports tend to be more expensive than those further away.