Well, I pulled my first tourist "duh" moment... maybe it was the altitude, maybe it was the long days and tired feet or maybe it was just all the junk I ate from the Beijing Night Market finally affecting my brain! So I'm all excited to head out to Juizhaigou to what I was told was an even prettier and more diverse national park than Huanglong. I get up early, grab a quick breakfast at the hostel, send off an email to all of you and head out the door to the park. So I get to the park, get my ticket, hop on one of the buses they have that will shuttle you around the park and head up to the highest peak in the park to hike back down, which all of that probably took one to one and half hours and when I get out at this cool spot looking out over a beautiful lake and get ready to take my first picture I realize I left my SD card in my tablet and thus I have no memory in my camera to take any pictures!! None! I'm in this gorgeous park and have no way to film it!! Well I start cussing out loud like a drunken sailor and thank goodness all the Chinese folks couldn't understand it (or at least I don't think they could!) but I was so mad. And the park doesn't allow any in and out privileges and believe it or not they didn't sell SD cards there or even cheapo cameras so I was stuck. Oh well, you'll have to just visualize all the really cool waterfalls and snow capped mountains and crystal clear lakes and... LOL. Actually I had already planned to spend 2 days hiking Juizhaigou since it's so huge so I just figured I'd pop back to those places and take the cool shots that I saw today and tomorrow explore new territory. In a weird way, it actually was cool because I wasn't looking thru a lens at everything but just taking it all in at a leisurely pace (I know, I know, I'm justifying my duh moment, but work with me people!! LOL) I do have a funny story to tell. I actually have many funny stories but I don't share them all since if I did the emails would go on and on even longer than they do and some of you may start putting me on auto delete (OK, I'm sure some of you have already done that! but the thousands of others who are hanging in there and reading these... the big Buddha may also reward you with 100 years! - if you read all these you deserve at least that!) Well my funny story is that I come around this corner and there's this gorgeous waterfall and huge snow capped mountain in the background that's just the perfect Kodak moment and there ahead are all these Chinese people staring at the ground and clicking away at their cameras. So I'm thinking maybe... kamodo dragon?... exotic snake?... Noooo... it's a chipmunk! Yes, a chipmunk! and not any unique, albino chipmunk or anything, just your run of the mill chipmunk (the kind my friend Leanne from work shoots in her backyard!) that kind of chipmunk. So they either don't get out much or are just fascinating by small rodents. You gotta love the Chinese and all the picture taking they do. Well, since I didn't have any great pictures from Juizhaigou from today (hopefully I'll have some tomorrow if the weather holds up - it was gorgeous again today) I thought I'd share a couple I forgot to share from the Panda Research place. Here are two pics of baby Red Pandas which are related to the raccoon family. Actually these are better pics to get you all ready for Halloween since they're wearing their little masks! I wish they celebrated Halloween here because I'd love to see what the Chinese people would dress up as! Hope everyone has a happy Halloween!! Save me some candy!! Jeff
The Wandering Italian 