A brief rant on North Dakota roads, Sacramento traffic, and purple toes

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for a brief rant. North Dakota apparently does not take its road maintenance responsibilities too seriously, nor would they want to inconvenience the rare road crew by requiring them to cover their freaking loads. Grrrrr.

We were bumping along Hwy 85 heading towards Spearfish when a large truck with an uncovered load of gravel passed us going the opposite direction. So what, you say. Well, keep in mind that the speed limit is 70 on a road where doing 55 will determine if you have any loose fillings. He hosed us so badly it sounded like we’d been hit by a shotgun blast. Insert many curse words here.

When we got to the campground we cleaned the windshield and found eight, count ‘em EIGHT, chips in the windshield. The campground staff were super helpful and recommended a mobile repair guy. We called our insurance and there were so many chips they had to run it as two claims. Oh well, stuff happens.

One of eight, compliments of N. Dakota Dept. of Transportation

About 8:00am the next morning more stuff happened. I got a tearful call from our youngest, and very distraught daughter, Rian.  “Mommmmmm. I was in an accident.” (A side note - Rian is still on our insurance and driving my car.) Unfortunately, a moment’s inattention in stop-and-go traffic was all it took and she rear ended the guy in front of her. After calming her down and ascertaining that she was OK, that nobody was injured, that the car was drivable, etc…. we told her to call the insurance company. Hey, it has happened to nearly all of us. But did it have to happen the very next day after we’d made a claim????

Hopefully the Insurance gods are benevolent. We’ll find out in four months when the policy renewal arrives. Lol.

My poor Nissan.

Just to give credence to the old saying that crap comes in threes, we get our second tearful call in a week. This time at about 1:00am Sunday morning from our oldest daughter Randi. “Mommmmmm. How do you tell if your toe is broken?” Apparently she had hit the doorframe at a dead run and her second toe was swollen, turning purple and hurt like hell. After calming her down and giving her instructions to ice it, take some Tylenol, etc... we told her to see how it was in the morning and go to an urgent care clinic if necessary.  The night brought no relief and X-rays the next day showed the toe had multiple fractures. OUCH! They taped it up and sent her home with some pain meds. She’ll be hobbling around for quite a while.

And this little piggy ran... right into the door frame....

and now has multiple fractures. OUCH! :(

Hopefully that wraps up life's little interruptions and we can return to our regularly scheduled programming. Lol.  Next up: The Needles Highway, Wind Caves National Park, and more hikes. We plan to do Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial tomorrow. Since my internet is still flaky, I’ll probably try to do several smaller posts rather than loading a bunch of pictures at once. Hope your week has been less eventful than ours!