Lost!

Looking back over my previous posts, I realized that I never told the story of getting lost in Yellowstone when I was little...

My family was checking out of Old Faithful Inn that morning, so my dad and my brother were taking some stuff out to the car to load up. I decided to follow them out, but was far enough behind that I didn't see which exit they took. I went out to the parking lot to look for them, but couldn't find them, so I went back up to our room. By this time, my mom had also left the hotel room, so no one was there.  

Back and forth I went between the parking lot and the room, getting more and more upset, because in my almost 8 year-old mind, they had surely gone ahead and left without me. How was I going to catch up with them? I wasn't sure of my aunt's address in California. I didn't know her phone number. How would I get there? Hitchhike?! Bus?! WAAAAAHHH!

The root of the problem was that I was going to the parking lot where we had left the car in the afternoon when we first got there...

Nope, not here!  Keep looking!

I had forgotten that there was another parking lot on the opposite side of the inn... where we had parked the car when we got back the night before.  

Finally, after wandering around the parking lot, bawling my eyes out, a nice man (as opposed to the creepy, pedophile kind) found me and stayed with me until we saw my dad. When Dad and I got back to our car, I saw that my mom had been crying. (Sorry, Mom!) After that, I don't remember much else.

On our trip this summer, I got a taste of what I must have put my mother through... more than twice over! My younger son J has a tendency to go off on his own, but at least he knows enough to stay put in one spot until one of us catches up to him. At least three times in Grand Teton and in Yellowstone, I got that little wave of panic when I couldn't see where he had gone off to. And at Colorado National Monument, we couldn't find M anywhere - not in the bathroom, not up ahead on the rim trail. After a little bit of searching and calling out his name, we finally found him... in the visitor center theater watching the park orientation movie. 

Of course the boys never even considered themselves "lost"... they always knew exactly where they were! Just doing their part to add even more gray hairs to my head!