Thanksgiving morning Eric woke up late from his night shift ready to hit the road. Though I was hesitant about the cold weather being that it was only 50 degrees high that day, we decided to suck it up and ride anyway. It was about 3:45pm when we left Ocean Springs, so we decided we would spend our first night in New Orleans, giving us about an hour and 30 minute first day's ride. Originally, we planned to make it to Houston the first day, but Eric's work schedule and the cold weather was not in our favor. After gearing up, and packing up, we started heading West.
Packing finally situated and ready to roll!
The weather actually wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. My 3 layer motorcycle jacket proved itself to be the bomb, and having wool socks and thermal underwear was definitely helpful too. By the time we made it to our hotel the sun had gone down and it was then about 44 degrees out. Since the drive was only an hour and a half the air was tolerable, but I could tell if we had driven any further without sunlight the drive would have been somewhat painful. At any rate, we unloaded the bike, parked it in the Queen & Crescent's secure parking lot, checked in, changed, and headed out to celebrate Thanksgiving at one of our favorite restaurants in New Orleans: Domenica!
We'd been here many many times before, but hadn't been in a while and I had been craving their delicious pizza and wine. Because it was a holiday, we decided to splurge on the roasted feta cauliflower that we had been eying since last year. We're glad we did because it was fantastic, and were thankful to have had a holiday excuse to splurge.
After dinner we had planned to go back to the hotel, shower, and start some blogging and finish up some homework, but we thought we would check out the life in Bourbon st first in order to see what the crowd was like on Thanksgiving. There were much more people than we thought there would be on a holiday, but it was quiet enough that we thought we'd take the opportunity to have a drink at Lafittes, since they are normally so busy that it's hard to get a foot in the door.
It was here that we met a great couple from the Houston area who we ended up spending the rest of the night with. Here we shared some stories, found a mutual love for the bar Ftitzel's just a few blocks down, and proceeded to spend the rest of the night listening to jazz, getting drunk and having a blast a Fritzel's. While our original plan was to head home straight after dinner, we ended up getting back around 1:30-2am instead.
The next day we woke up around 10am, a little later than we hoped, and spent quite some time trying to regain our strength from the amount of alcohol ingested the night before. The remaining hour we had before checking out went something like this:
Eric: Hey do you need to use the lotion? (yelling from the bathroom)
Me: No thanks I'm putting some on now
Eric: ........ oh I just realized i was using conditioner as lotion
Guess that's what you get for drinking one too many drinks the night before. After checking out, it was about 11:30 by the time we loaded up the bike and set back out on the road. After New Orleans, our plan was to head to Houston to stay with Eric's aunt and uncle for the night.
The ride out of New Orleans was slightly warmer than it was the day before. The weather was supposed to warm up each day so we knew to expect a positive weather change. Though, even so, the high was about 55 degrees so we still wore all of our warm thermal gear. The drive took us a little over seven hours with a few stops to get lunch and a few gas/bathroom breaks, and we ended up riding in the dark for a good hour on the way into Houston. We finally arrived around 7pm, and by that time I was so thankful to get off the bike and into a warm house with warm home made food.
After dinner, we went to bed early since we were both beat from our long day of riding. It's amazing how exhausting 7+ hours can be on a motorcycle!
This morning we woke up early, got breakfast from Denny's with Mr. & Mrs. Ting, and started back on the road by about 10:30. I didnt want to leave too early since the temperature was about 41 degrees when we got in the night before, but by 10 we were shedding layers and by 12 we stopped at a rest stop to take off more. It was a high of 77 degrees today, and made for a perfect day of riding. We had hoped to make it from Houston to Reynosa, Mexico by tonight, but riding on the bike verses a car takes us much longer to get around than we expected it would. We arrived in Mcallen, TX around 5pm and knew it would be dark by the time we crossed the border in Mexico so decided to stay on the U.S side for the night instead. We found a nice place just a few miles from the border, which will hopefully allow us to get to into Mexico before 10am tomorrow. From there, we havnt quite decided where we will be going, but plan to make it down to Mazatlan at some point in the next few days.
If you don't have it already, this is a link to our SPOT locator which tracks where we are every 10 minutes, where we stay for the night, and when and if we need help along the way.
Mr. & Mrs. Ting
My clear excitement for warmer weather
Mcallen TX hotel
Until tomorrow..
Packing finally situated and ready to roll!
The weather actually wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. My 3 layer motorcycle jacket proved itself to be the bomb, and having wool socks and thermal underwear was definitely helpful too. By the time we made it to our hotel the sun had gone down and it was then about 44 degrees out. Since the drive was only an hour and a half the air was tolerable, but I could tell if we had driven any further without sunlight the drive would have been somewhat painful. At any rate, we unloaded the bike, parked it in the Queen & Crescent's secure parking lot, checked in, changed, and headed out to celebrate Thanksgiving at one of our favorite restaurants in New Orleans: Domenica!
We'd been here many many times before, but hadn't been in a while and I had been craving their delicious pizza and wine. Because it was a holiday, we decided to splurge on the roasted feta cauliflower that we had been eying since last year. We're glad we did because it was fantastic, and were thankful to have had a holiday excuse to splurge.
After dinner we had planned to go back to the hotel, shower, and start some blogging and finish up some homework, but we thought we would check out the life in Bourbon st first in order to see what the crowd was like on Thanksgiving. There were much more people than we thought there would be on a holiday, but it was quiet enough that we thought we'd take the opportunity to have a drink at Lafittes, since they are normally so busy that it's hard to get a foot in the door.
It was here that we met a great couple from the Houston area who we ended up spending the rest of the night with. Here we shared some stories, found a mutual love for the bar Ftitzel's just a few blocks down, and proceeded to spend the rest of the night listening to jazz, getting drunk and having a blast a Fritzel's. While our original plan was to head home straight after dinner, we ended up getting back around 1:30-2am instead.
The next day we woke up around 10am, a little later than we hoped, and spent quite some time trying to regain our strength from the amount of alcohol ingested the night before. The remaining hour we had before checking out went something like this:
Eric: Hey do you need to use the lotion? (yelling from the bathroom)
Me: No thanks I'm putting some on now
Eric: ........ oh I just realized i was using conditioner as lotion
Guess that's what you get for drinking one too many drinks the night before. After checking out, it was about 11:30 by the time we loaded up the bike and set back out on the road. After New Orleans, our plan was to head to Houston to stay with Eric's aunt and uncle for the night.
The ride out of New Orleans was slightly warmer than it was the day before. The weather was supposed to warm up each day so we knew to expect a positive weather change. Though, even so, the high was about 55 degrees so we still wore all of our warm thermal gear. The drive took us a little over seven hours with a few stops to get lunch and a few gas/bathroom breaks, and we ended up riding in the dark for a good hour on the way into Houston. We finally arrived around 7pm, and by that time I was so thankful to get off the bike and into a warm house with warm home made food.
After dinner, we went to bed early since we were both beat from our long day of riding. It's amazing how exhausting 7+ hours can be on a motorcycle!
This morning we woke up early, got breakfast from Denny's with Mr. & Mrs. Ting, and started back on the road by about 10:30. I didnt want to leave too early since the temperature was about 41 degrees when we got in the night before, but by 10 we were shedding layers and by 12 we stopped at a rest stop to take off more. It was a high of 77 degrees today, and made for a perfect day of riding. We had hoped to make it from Houston to Reynosa, Mexico by tonight, but riding on the bike verses a car takes us much longer to get around than we expected it would. We arrived in Mcallen, TX around 5pm and knew it would be dark by the time we crossed the border in Mexico so decided to stay on the U.S side for the night instead. We found a nice place just a few miles from the border, which will hopefully allow us to get to into Mexico before 10am tomorrow. From there, we havnt quite decided where we will be going, but plan to make it down to Mazatlan at some point in the next few days.
If you don't have it already, this is a link to our SPOT locator which tracks where we are every 10 minutes, where we stay for the night, and when and if we need help along the way.
Mr. & Mrs. Ting
My clear excitement for warmer weather
Mcallen TX hotel
Until tomorrow..
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