Day one: my friend drove me to the airport. My flight to Baltimore was delayed to the point where I would miss my connecting flight. So I had to rebook and the next one out wasn’t until the next day. I sheepishly called my friend and got a ride home. I’d much rather be stranded at home than at some random airport.
Day Two: Got up at 3:30 AM and my husband drove me to the airport. Flew to Baltimore, crossed the airport to my next flight and landed in Savannah. My daughter picked me up in a hot car. “My van’s air condition just stopped working.”
Uh oh.
On the way back to my daughter’s place we stopped at an oil change garage with the hope that it was a fuse or the air conditioning just needed a recharge. Nope. The desk person sat down with us and earnestly let us know that it would take a lot of money and time to repair her 15 year old car (my husband later checked that the repair would be 3/4 of the price of the car). So we took a deep breath and made the choice to not fix the air conditioner. In Georgia. And 4 days of travel. We went back to my daughter’s work where she takes care of ringtail lemurs and she gave me a tour. It was a wonderful place and I’m glad she got this opportunity as a temporary keeper. We stayed overnight.
Day three: We got on the road about 11 AM due to packing up her stuff, saying goodbyes. The first destination was the Duke Lemur center in Durham, North Carolina. We just had to drive almost two states to get there by 5 PM. Temperatures ranged from 95 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. We got on the road, windows open, music blasting. This leg of our journey was the worst of the whole trip. We stopped at a Walmart to get some usb charged fans but they didn’t do much. We used cooling cloths soaked in ice water, and sheer willpower. It was so noisy with the wind, but closing the window to hear each other was pretty miserable. We belted out the muppets song “Movin’ Right Along” (the Alkaline Trio version) and did our best to stay cheerful.
“So how long until we get there?”
“We’ll get there by 5- if we don’t stop at all.”
Ugh. We didn’t want to miss seeing this place, but we needed to stop for gas, at the very least. My daughter looked up the tour and found out it was just a window of time for a self-guided experience. Phew. We drove through South Carolina, reading the billboards. We went through a drive-by exorcism where Jesus compelled our demons to leave our bodies. It seemed to help a bit, as did the encouraging billboards for South of the Border, a tourist trap area, which updated us as to how close we were to its restaurant, fireworks stands, souvenir shops, reptile lagoon, campground and more. We stopped for gas, and walked around one shop to refill our water bottles and wipe away some of the sweat in the air conditioning. Then on through North Carolina.
We arrived in Durham at 5:30, checked in and refilled our water bottles, chugging water. The Duke Lemur center is a part of Duke University. There are a series of enclosures and buildings. We walked around and saw many different types of lemurs- My daughter’s favorite is the Shifaka (pronounced “she-fawk”), because of the way they move (do you remember Zooboomafoo?) We chatted with the staff and volunteers, who knew the place Kira had worked and were interested in recruiting her. One of the buildings was for nocturnal lemurs- after a briefing we went into the dark room with only dim red light, instructed to not make any noise. I couldn’t see a thing- my daughter pointed out movement and she was excited to see them (I saw some movement that could have been anything). It got to the point where she was signing and trying to point my head in the right direction! Anyway, she saw a bush baby and a bunch of grey mouse lemurs. Other species they have include ring-tail lemurs, red ruffed, fat tailed dwarf lemurs, aye-aye, collared, crowned, blue eyed black, mongoose, red-fronted brown, and black and white ruffed lemurs. You would think that interacting with the same animal for 6 months would make my daughter blasé, but no, she was still enchanted. We toured around the enclosures, spoke with more staff and discussed the interesting branching of evolution that occurred on one island for all these species (Madagascar). We also got a lot of cool merchandise in the little (air conditioned!) gift shop.
Then we went to our hotel, freshened up, went out for sandwiches, and went to sleep- the next day we were determined to travel in the cool of the morning.
