A good day turned bad…turned worse.

The second Saturday in August, we planned a little excursion to Rooster Rock State Park to picnic and swim.

While eating lunch, a very aggressive squirrel bit the tip of Brian’s toe.  He then remained around, despite us throwing rocks at it, for the reminder of our picnic.

We then wanted to go swimming, but the beach where we had planned to go (and that Brian had gone to as a kid) was all overgrown and unusable, so, after talking to a park ranger who assured us that the “clothes optional” beach was family friendly, we braved the nude beach with high hopes.

The beach would have been the perfect beach had it not been for all of the nudists that we tried hard not to look at and that we distracted our children from the entire time.  Luckily the girls were completely oblivious and we spent the whole time in the middle of the river (only knee deep for Elna) away from the nudes.

Unfortunately, this was our first and last trip to this beach, because really, it was such a great beach for kids!

On our way home, the worst part of our day happened, when a suburban t-boned our van as they were turning left out of a restaurant on Columbia River Hwy--they didn’t see us coming and got us pretty good. 

It was alarming to us all, but we are so grateful no one was injured- neither us nor them were hurt at all—a miracle when you see the damage our van took.  Harriet, who was sitting next to the sliding damaged door got the brunt of the hit, but she only had a few bruises and scratches from all of the glass.  We were so blessed!

We miss our van!  Their insurance company gave us as much money as we paid for the van a year ago, but we got such an amazing deal on the van then that we can’t find the same kind of van for the price we paid.  We are still looking, and grateful that Brian’s parents have been letting us use their other car while we look.

We ended our evening by going on a little date to the doctor to make sure Brian’s toe was okay.  Apparently there are no recorded cases in the US of squirrel bites causing rabies, so instead of needing a rabies shot, Brian only had to update his tetanus shot.