Tips4theTrip: Poop? Yes, but not just any poop

How far does your fascination with pandas extend?

That’s the question behind this photo. I shot it one morning in 2013 at the San Diego Zoo, where legions of visitors queue up daily to see and learn all sorts of things about the zoo’s three giant pandas. In fact, the zoo offers a special two-hour “Early morning with Pandas” tour for $99 a head.

As the zoo Web pages note, pandas are “black and white and loved all over.”

1/23

Guide Raymond Chee stands at Upper Antelope Canyon, Ariz., on a cloudy day. Photo taken in 2013.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

2/23

Because pandas have unusually inefficient digestive systems, they eat enormous amounts of bamboo, and eliminate enormous amounts, too. Photo shot in 2013.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

3/23

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park. Photo taken in July 2015.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

4/23

Faneuil Hall, Boston. Photo shot in July 2015.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

5/23

Lake George, N.Y. Photo taken in July 2015.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

6/23

Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Photo shot in July 2015.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

7/23

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

8/23

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

9/23

Somewhere over Arizona. Photo shot in July 2015.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

10/23

Yellowstone National Park. Photo shot in July 2015.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

11/23

Providence, R.I. Photo shot in July 2015.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

12/23

Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley National Park.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

13/23

Wizard Island, Crater Lake, Oregon. Photo shot in May 2015.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

14/23

A lone biker pedals up Avenue of the Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, near Myers Flat.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

15/23

Late-afternoon sunbeams on San Francisco Street highlight the texture of downtown Santa Fe’s adobe-style architecture.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

16/23

Surfboard House, a B&B in Hanalei, Kauai.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

17/23

This is the ceiling of the 16th century Museo Ex Convento and Parroquia Nuestra Senora de la Natividad, Tepoztlan, Mexico.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

18/23

You can tell the locals in Monument Valley -- they’re the ones hauling hay and water for their animals.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

19/23

This is Mt. Rundle, as seen from Vermilion Lakes, Banff National Park. The photo was shot early on Nov. 18, 2014.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

20/23

Low tide, San Felipe, Baja California.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

21/23

Flamingo, San Diego Zoo.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

22/23

The view from the Encore Hotel, 2008, in Las Vegas.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

23/23

Portland’s Ace Hotel, shown here in 2013, opened in 2007.

  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

The zoo also reports that pandas spend more than 12 hours a day eating bamboo stalks and leaves, using their teeth to pull off the stalks’ rough outer layers. In San Diego, keepers also serve up occasional carrots, yams, apples and biscuits.

The animals typically live up to 20 years in the wild and 30 years in captivity, which the zoo calls “managed care.” The males weigh up to 275 pounds, while the females get up to 220 pounds.

As for their poop, well, there’s a lot of it for keepers to shovel every morning. And lots of people are eager to learn more about it, for all sorts of reasons. It seems that pandas ate both meat and bamboo before settling into a bamboo-only diet about 2 million years ago. Nowadays, they digest just 17% of the bamboo they eat, the rest passing right through. It’s because of that inefficiency that they have to spend most of their waking hours eating.

You can always count on travel to teach you something — but what? Travel is the substitute teacher who didn’t get the lesson plan, the adjunct lecturer who starts with a beach town and goes off on animal excrement, the grad assistant who trashes your poetry, then hands out red velvet cupcakes. If only you’d had a clue what was coming, right?

This gallery is built from new and old adventures in the West and the world beyond. The words and photos are all mine.

christopher.reynolds@latimes.com

Twitter: @mrcsreynolds

ALSO

Stop thinking and jump (and other illustrated wisdom from the road)

Here’s why these 8 national parks are Instagram stars -- and why Yosemite isn’t

Yosemite: How to handle the new names, numbers and concessionaire arriving March 1