Days thirty eight and thirty nine, MEMPHIS to New orleans

My route book had indicated we would leave Memphis on the I240 east and then take the 78 down to Tupelo, to give us a good long run on the Natchez Grace Parkway to our overnight at Kosciusko, Mississippi. It was pissing with rain as we left Memphis and I never did find Route 78 and we finished up heading south on the I55 for most of the day with just a short stint on a secondary back road to get to Kosciusko, Mississippi. This is a quaint wee town, the courthouse and town square could be right out of the movie set of “Back to the future”, the fictional town of Hill City. A quick check on google shows it is not but it would be fair to make that mistake. Now the heart of Mississippi is well and truly Confederate Country, so not unexpected to find the confederate flag flying in the town square and a memorial to the “ men in grey” that fought in the civil war.

We overnighted in Kosciusko and headed off early the next day down the Natchez Trace Parkway toward Jackson, needing to get to New Orleans about midday if possible. Horse and Janelles last day on the bike and they needed to get there early for the bike pickup and Red and I needed to get our bikes to the Triumph and BMW dealership, TTRNO, NOLA as we were getting new back tyres and a service since we have done about 10,000 kms to date on the trip.

The pic of the nice road with the mown verges is the Natchez Trace parkway, of which we did a little over 100 kms on and the four laner is the I55. This is one of the most “mature” interstates we have ridden in terms of vegetation. It had tall pine trees for much of its length not only in the middle so you could not see north bound traffic on the other side, but also to our right.

The good thing about a well tree’d interstate in this part of the country is the shade it provides when the riding temps are mid thirties!!!, with humidity waaaaay to high for comfortable riding.

We took a wee diversion to get in to NOLA instead of staying on the I55, we cruised around and went across the Lake Ponchatrain causeway, the longest causeway in the world at 24 miles long. It is a toll road, very cool to ride, for several miles in the middle you cannot see land in any direction, did it just to say we had.

Freeway riding in actual NOLA was all good and it was a relatively straight forward ride into the Accommodation in the French Quarter on South Peters Street.