11/03/2011 - Thursday morning, time to get up and get ready for the journey home. I woke up, got dressed and walked to Cafe du Monde on a solo mission. I had been told repeatedly that I needed to go there and enjoy a beignet. It was delicious; however, it just reminded me of a sopapilla served without honey. The clientele at 8:00 in the morning reminded me of sitting in an audience at a taping of the Oprah Winfrey show. When I got back to the Holiday Inn, the room was empty and all of the bags were gone. I momentarily thought that Dan, Kevin, and Tim ditched me. I soon received a text from Kevin that they had loaded up the car and went across the street for coffee, so I met them at PJ's Coffee Shop on Canal St. While sitting on the patio of PJ's, it started raining. I just figured that New Orleans was sad to see us go.
We left the parking garage and I was in the lead. As I've stated in the past, I'm an excellent pilot but a horrible navigator. This instance was no exception and I zigged when I should have zagged and took us out of the city the wrong way. We huddled up at a Shell station and came up with alternative route. It was still raining so I broke down and put on my rain gear and we were on the move again. We traveled the Interstates for the majority of the day trying to make up for some lost time. We only traveled about 200 miles today. There is really no easy way to get across Mississippi utilizing the back roads, but we have a plan from Jackson.
We got to Jackson, MS around 5:00 and had to decide whether or not to get a hotel or travel 90 miles to the next town that might have a hotel. We wouldn't arrive there until after dark so we decided to play it safe and get a room at the Quality Inn. Apparently their housekeeping isn't quite so quality because the room we initially got had not been serviced for the day. The beds were still in disarray and the room was filthy. We got another room that was in much better shape and set up shop.
We are staying across the street from the Jackson Coliseum which is hosting the "Mistletoe Market" which is some kind of Christmas Bazaar. I felt like all of the ladies from the Cafe du Monde followed me to Jackson.
We ate dinner at Wing Stop. It was really mediocre. As Kevin said "I could take some frozen Tyson Chicken Nuggets throw them in some Red Hot and have this at home." That was everyone's assessment of the meal. It was a far cry from last night's fine dining. A quick stop at the Shell station for some barley sodas and we were back to the Quality Inn for the evening.
