"Let's go to the zoo!"

I had to think about it for a minute. Neither of us had anything planned for the next couple of days; I would have been quite happy to just stay there in bed with Amanda for the next 48 hours. But her eyes lit up at the idea of a spontaneous road trip, and her voice gained a playful lilt that had been missing of late; there was no way I could say no. "OK", I said. A little change of scenery might be a Good Thing® for us.

We drove first to her parents' house, where her Le Car sat, after its newest round of repairs; we would drive it, the more fuel-efficient and intimate of our vehicles, to the State Zoo in Asheville.

Amanda took the wheel; I would handle the return trip. We drove up I-85, switching to I-40 outside of Greensboro, which took us the rest of the way to Asheville. We held hands on occasion, and sang along to the radio if we found a song to sing. I took a brief nap in the passenger seat, and offered to take over the driving if she wanted a nap; she declined.

We made it to Asheville in about six hours, with a few pit stops along the way, and we started looking for the road signs that would lead us to the zoo. There were signs for other tourist attractions, but none that mentioned the zoo. Then it came to me:

"Isn't the zoo in Asheboro?"

"Oh."

Neither of us were Great Experts on state geography. But it made sense for a State Zoo to be in centrally-located Asheboro (less than an hour's drive for us), and not in the remote western mountains of Asheville.

We spent the rest of the afternoon, what little remained of it, visiting some arts and crafts places around town; it kept us out of the rain, and gave us something to look at, even if it wasn't the wild aminals we'd had in mind. Then we headed back home. Amanda got her nap in, and when she awoke, we held hands again for awhile. I pulled her hand to me and kissed it; it was still a good day, in spite of the snafu.

"We're a couple of idiots, aren't we?", she said.

I kissed her hand again.

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