Bugs Are Bad

You can't really tell from this picture, but our car was covered.  I have never seen so many mosquitoes in my life.  There were columns and swarms of them.  One of my kids said it looked like there was a tornado of them swirling around.  We didn't dare get out of the car.  The picnic tables were covered with them too. Optimistically, I brought sunscreen for our Saturday picnic, not bug repellent.

I was looking forward to Saturday.  I felt a need to be out in nature, specifically I wanted to go to Antelope Island. I wanted to reconnect with the earth, my family, and myself.  Antelope Island felt like the only place to do that.  After an hour long drive, we arrived at the gate of the Antelope Island Causeway and a blinking, electronic sign that informed us, "Bugs are bad on the island."  That was enough to get my husband to turn the car around. He was wearing shorts and not at all happy about the idea of black gnats biting him. "We could go there, but I'd stay in the car the whole time," he said.  That was not part of the plan.

He liked the idea of heading north up to Willard Bay.  I had mentioned it as a potential destination a few days earlier along with the possibility that maybe we'd see white pelicans.  I thought they were geese at first, but in answer to that hope, we did speed past a few pelicans in man-made lake in a park near the freeway.  

"We have bugs here too," said the gate attendant at Willard Bay a half hour or so later.  My husband told her we were only there for a picnic and she assured us we'd have a nice time.  

Yeah, in the car.  

No person, sunscreen, big floppy hat, picnic mat, picnic food, frog blanket, or Frisbee left the car. We passed the bag of chips around.

"There's only one thing that would make this worse," I said, "Not having food."  Thankfully, we had plenty of food.