Day 2, Bonifay, Fl to New Orleans, LA

Tricia and I walked over to McDonald's from the hotel for a drink and biscuit while Janet packed her bike. She was packing a bit more than either of us. We'll put that down to the fact she's a newbie riding to her first convention and she has yet to learn to leave it home if you can buy it on the road.

We left Bonifay, Fl about 8:30 AM. I 10. It's a 2 lane Interstate with a speed limit of 70 MPH. I just loved riding on this highway. It seems the drivers are much more sensible than in central Florida. They pass on left then immediately get back in the right lane so they aren't holding up traffic. Because they drive like that (and like most drivers back in Canada, just saying), it's much less chaotic. We kept to the speed limit, not because we were afraid of tickets, but Janet and I only ride 650 and 750's and that's about our comfort level.

We stopped at Logan's Roadhouse in Mobile, Alabama for lunch. Tricia  has a friend, Sheila, who works in Mobile, that's she's known since 2nd grade. She gave Sheila a call to see if she wanted to meet us for lunch. She's an author. I recently downloaded her book from Amazon, it's called "Life and Death on the Tamiami Trail". She has book 2 completed, it's called "Life and Death in Siesta Keys". It's a series of 6 books. I was excited to meet a published author. Tricia said "She's just an average person". I said, "Of course she isn't, how many average people actually write/publish books?" Sheila bases her books on real people she's met in her life, and one of the first things she said to us was "Don't be mean to me, or you'll be in  my next book". LOL

Sheila and Tricia at lunch.

Shortly after we left the Daphne exit after lunch, we hit our busiest bit of highway since we'd left on the 2nd. Lots of lanes, traffic, and even a tunnel. I was our leader (which is something like the blind leading the blind since I've never been north of Chiefland before) but we managed to navigate through it. I really surprised myself at how calm I stayed travelling on these busy roads when all I knew to do was watch for 10 West signs and stay in the middle lane in case we needed to change to the left or right lanes to keep going in the right direction.

Our plan for day 2 was to travel as far as New Orleans and spend the night. We'd made reservations the night before, using Trivago.com, at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown New Orleans, so if we could find that, we wouldn't have to ride around looking for lodgings for the night.

We had no problems finding our way to New Orleans, and when we stopped for gas in East New Orleans, Tricia called her niece Tricia Anne, who lives in NO, to see if she wanted to come by the hotel and visit. She also told us how to navigate to the downtown area. We did get a bit lost trying to find the convention center, so we asked a police officer where the Hilton was. He pointed us down the street and we landed at the Hilton Convention Hotel. In NO there are police officers on every corner. They are also on horseback!

Policeman on horseback in downtown NO, July 3, 2014

They, the Hilton valets, wouldn't let us pull up and unload at the curb,  they told us we'd have to ride around the block and go into the parking garage. We did that, and I went inside to register while Janet and Tricia unloaded their bikes. Janet commandeered a lady on a golf cart like vehicle and offered her $ to haul her luggage to the hotel entrance. I was skeptical this person was legit, but Tricia checked later and she was. In any case, unloading the bikes was a bad idea. We were at the wrong Hilton. Ours was a few blocks away, still downtown, but we were tired, the place was packed and we hated to have to load up the bikes again. Tricia Anne to the rescue. She came in her car, loaded up our stuff and led us to the correct hotel.

This hotel wouldn't let us have a luggage rack, only valets bring in the luggage and park the vehicles. I told them, that won't work for us we're on motorcycles. And they wanted to charges us $33.50 per bike for parking. Hmmm I don't think so. They did have meters on the street, but the street was under construction. The valet supervisor told us we could park on the street from 6 PM to 6 AM but after that we'd have to move the bikes. We parked all 3 diagonally in one spot, it was 5 to 6 and we went up to our room. We decided we'd take our chances parking for free on the street and move the bikes at 6 AM.




Our bikes parked on the street at the Hilton in New Orleans, for free!



After we got everything up to the room, we went to the rooftop pool/spa area for a bit before heading out to dinner.

I'm making a new post for our evening in New Orleans. Day 2, another fabulous travel day, the night to follow, was even better.