The touristin began with the zoo

I took a lot of photos but only a few were suitable or interesting enough to post here. Thankfully I went digital, no need to waste film on lots of images that were, well, dumb. Or blurry. Or the animals all looked like ants.

Anyway, after Mom and Liz go here, we spent a day catching up with shopping. Or maybe 2 days? I'm not sure. It's all a blur now. Either way, our first venture out that didn't include buying gifts was to the zoo. Though I'm always very careful about making sure my memory card is always with my camera, this time I forgot it. While Apollo and I went back to the camera stand to buy a new memory card at prices that would make you scratch your eyes out, Mom and Liz went on ahead without us.

As you may have guessed, that was a big mistake. Apollo and I then spent the next hour looking for them. First we thought it would be no big deal until the path they had taken forked in two. We made a gamble and went with the easy path and then the path split into three and then continued to fork and join up, etc. It was a mess. We were a mess. We didn't know what to do. So, we split up. Since we had cell phones, we could communicate if we caught up with them. Ha! We finally gave up and flopped down in front of the gorilla display in utter failure, sweaty and thirsty. We decided we should just start checking out the animals like Mom and Liz, at no regard to our feelings, were doing.


We were lucky enough to watch one of the zoo handlers throw down food for the gorillas and saw all three babies while the adults claimed their portion in status order. One gorilla even came down and pressed his butt up against the window at the audience. I liked his sense of humor. It was like being around family! Or at least Aimee. hehe.


Forlorn and exhausted, we decided to head back up to the main part of the zoo, hoping Mom and Liz would think to look for us at least on their way back to the car. As luck would have it, they had somehow passed us at each of the stations we had been at and were at the same camera stand looking for batteries! They were wide eyed, not in confusion or concern...no...but in the excitement of having just traveled over half the zoo. No kidding! They showed me the paths they had taken on the map, I was amazed.

We finally did get to see the rest of the zoo together. This time Apollo and I did a sort of teamwork-buddy system. One of us was attached to one of them for the rest of the trip. Since we had cell phones, we figured we could always call each other for an update on location. Whenever Mom wandered off, I went with her. Liz would, of course, go the other way, Apollo went with her. It was almost like taking two pre-schoolers out to the circus.


This is pretty much what we saw of Mom and Liz if we weren't careful. No, not that person looking at the zoo map, that's what Apollo and I did. Liz and Mom, those two people way down the sidewalk, took off like their lives depended on covering every square foot of the zoo. We finally gave up and told them to meet us at the front while we upgraded our tickets to the annual membership. By the time we were done, we had about five minutes of leisure time before they joined us.

Basically, Apollo and I learned our lesson on this trip. We decided to tag-team for the rest of their visit.