The simplest, easiest method of having screens I’ve found.
On May 29th we left our beautiful campground near Lost Horse Creek Rd. in Montana. We drove north to just short of the Canadian border inside of Montana on highway 93 (we wanted to enter Canada in the morning). It was late and we were tired so I found a Forest Service Rd and we headed up it.
The road I had planned to take was gated, it turns out it had been converted to a winter skiing trail. But it had a very large parking lot as a trail-head and it was very close to Highway 93. Thinking it might have internet I tried out my Verizon MIFI device and yes, I had 3 bars of 4G. The legality of camping at trail-heads is debatable so we headed down the same road in the opposite direction and found a decent campsite. I jumped out to look around and was immediately surrounded by hordes of mosquitoes! It too had internet, but no way were we going to camp there. The trail-head had almost no mosquitoes and better internet; that was a deal that was too good to pass up! Besides, it was completely out of sight of the main road and we felt secluded enough to risk spending the night there, so we settled in rather than look for a more “legal” campsite. In fact we liked it so much we ended up spending a second day there as a rest day.
I’m not going to bother giving you a report on the campsite so instead I want to talk about the single biggest issue facing anyone driving into the North Country: mosquitoes! The further north you go, the worse they get! I guess that’s because of the long, snowy winters and the short cool summers. In the spring the snow melts and runoff totally saturates the earth and then takes a very long to dry out. That gives the mosquitoes an abundance of standing water to breed in and there is an abundance of game (and humans) to provide blood for baby food! And the far north is the worst because much of it has permafrost which never thaws and so the water can’t go anywhere so it just stands on the surface all summer—the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.
If you are going to live with the mosquitoes you need two things: 1) Mosquito netting on your windows 2) Bug repellant. In this post we are going to talk about those two things:
Moquito netting:
Since I’ve been a vandweller, I’ve seen a large variety of different ways to keep netting on your windows, but I think Judy’s is the simplest and best of all. Here’s how she did it:
- Buy the netting and cut it to the size to fit around your windows. Making a pattern out of cardboard helps with that.
- Fold a strip of good quality duct tape over the outward perimeter of the pre-cut netting to prevent it from unraveling or cutting you.
- Buy some high-power (rare earth) magnets to stick it on with.
To put the up you just hold it up over the window, put a magnet on the corner and start and then placing them every 8 inches or so until there are no gaps. You’ll have to straighten out the netting as you go. Very, very simple and effective!
Mosquito Repellant:
There are two ways to repel mosquitoes 1) Apply the repellent to your skin directly 2) Apply it to your clothes. There isn’t much I can tell you about topical repellent that you don’t already know. Anything with DEET works extremely well (the higher the percentage, the better it works) but it is nasty stuff! I hate the feel and smell of it and I think we are all a little bit afraid of what it is doing to our health. I carry some with me and I fully expect to end up using some of it no matter how much I hate it. We all have some more natural alternative we’ve tried and some of us like them. I’ve used repellents with Eucalyptus and others with picadirn. And they work okay if the mosquitoes aren’t too unbearable. But when they are just horribly thick, they aren’t good enough. Then I’ll use DEET. If you are looking for natural mosquito repellents, here is a page of them on Amazon.com:
Natural Mosquito Repellents on Amazon.com
Treating Your Clothes With Permethrin:
But there is a second choice, and that is to treat your clothes with permithrin. Its a powerful insecticide that the military uses to treat all the uniforms for our troops who are stationed in areas where Malaria is common. It works very well, once your clothes are treated, the mosquito or ticks won’t land on it or if they do, they will quickly fly away. All the studies have shown it to be safe for treating clothes and you can buy clothes that have already been treated with it. It’s still an insecticide and so you need to be aware it is a poison that you are applying to your clothes. For me, it’s as simple as knowing it greatly reduces my need for DEET and that is good enough for me. When I lived in Alaska I had been doing it for the last few years I lived there after I learned about it. It works!
The problem with it is, it wears out of your clothes and loses its effectiveness. I bought the Sawyer brand of Permethrin and it says it will last through 6 washings or 42 days, whichever comes first—and that’s typical of all of the brands I’ve heard of. Buy it here from Amazon:
SaverPak 2 Pack – Includes 2 Sawyer Clothing Insect Repellent 24 oz Bottles of Trigger Spray
Here I am spraying a shirt. I must have put in on too heavy because it did half what they suggested it would do. There was no color shift on any of my clothes.
I laid out some trash bags to do it on. After the clothes are treated, leave them in the sun to dry for at least 2 hours. NEVER, EVER apply Permethrin directly to your skin!! Treat clothes only and let them totally dry.
NEVER, EVER apply Permethrin directly to your skin!! Treat clothes only and let them totally dry before wearing or putting away.
My shirts hanging to dry. The rest of the clothes are draped over my chair in the background. Let them totally dry before wearing or putting them away!!
After it’s dried you just wear and wash as normal except bugs won’t land or stay on the clothes. It works just as well for ticks, so if you are in tick country I’d use it for sure! The risk of Lymes disease is much worse than the risk from this stuff!
I’m glad there are ways to deal with mosquitoes and flies. My favorite is to avoid their habitat. 😉
Al, you eliminate the most beautiful places on earth that way!!
Bob
Thanks Bob. I sure have to take down a lot of notes after reading your posts.
Thanks Tom, that’s the idea!
Bob
I love the netting idea, I never thought about using magnets. I think I’ll do that for my van. I love the older vans like mine, it has a full steel body so I can use magnetic hooks and all sorts of things, works out great.
I love access to the steel Myddy! My cargo van is open steel everywhere, but Judy’s passenger van has no, zero, steel inside it. Drive me crazy!
Bob
Permethrin is news to me. Sounds like a reasonable alternative most of the time.
Calvin, it’s very popular in the backpacking community, that’s where I learned about it.
Bob
I camp in my mini-van and here’s how I dealt with the bug issue. I used a cardboard to outline the front doors (as Judy did), then I bought black nylon screen, folded it in half so it was doubled, and using the cardboard pattern, I outlined the shape of the door onto the doubled screen with a yellow tire marker. I left about 3 or 4 inches of extra screen to hang below the base of the “window-sill”. I cut the nylon screen with scissors, adding an inch extra around the sides and top of the door for the hem, then on my sewing machine, I stitched around the shape of the door, leaving the bottom open. I turned it inside out, so it resembled a pillowcase, and slipped it over the top the door. It provides a double screen for the window that doesn’t require anything to hold it in place. The door opens and closes without a problem, and because the screen is nylon, there are no wires to jab you or scratch your vehicle. I have one for each of the front doors. When traveling, the screens are folded up in a zip lock bag, ready for the next stop! I hope that this helps someone else. Any questions?
PAwoodsman, I’ve seen that done before and it works very well! Thanks for sharing that with us!
Bob
Holy cow! What a neat idea! I’ve made a couple of amateur pillowcases and I could do this too. I think duct tape could also be used instead of a sewing machine. And I’m a cheapskate and those rare-earth magnets can get expensive. Anyone have a good resource? Leevalley.com is my place.
Screen pillowcases for your door windows. Could you provide pics to Bob?
BTW-I’ve had REALLY good luck shopping for mosquito options at Jewel-Osco stores just at the end of seasons. They have little isle space and it rotates with the seasons. If you watch, EVERYTHING goes on clearance. Grill items that cost $5-10 go for $1. Bug spray normally at $5-7 goes for $3. You have to get lucky, but if you find yourself in one, off-season, it’s worth a look!
Good tips there Dan, thanks!
Bob
I know I’d look perfectly ridiculous, but, I think I’d like to try a whole suit of no-seeum netting. In late winter, I did a partial one by draping a big no-seeum net over my hat (I bought a big fabric roll of it and has been one of my best investments) and shoulders and tied it with string around my neck. It worked well. I also drape a huge piece of it over a bar in front of my open side door. Then I clip it to the overhead bar and the door rubber sealing. I can do the same for my back doors if I wanted, but, I haven’t needed to do that. I just open the side door, front passenger window and back side windows. In tandem with the fan running, it’s been great ventilation without the buggies wandering in. I’ve avelcroed the same netting around my back side and front passenger side windows. I leave those nets up year round. It’s too much of a pain to take them down. Where I am at Tahoe, the bugs haven’t been bad at all, thankfully.
Happy journeys to you both!
Gloria, actually, you can buy a bug-shirt which is like a head-net but it doesn’t stop at the neck, it becomes a shirt that covers from the waist up. I think you can even get pants.
he bugs in the north are truly bad. You have to do something. Moose can loose a pint of blood a day to mosquitoes!
Bob
Good post! All the tips are worthwhile too. Thanks!
You’re welcome Rob!
Bob
All of this is very helpful to me as a beginner nomad. Thank you for posting this to your blog, and to others for their comments.
Jim, I’m very pleased to help you in any way I can!
Bob
At age 75 I still love any kind of camping. My Toyota RAV4 was the best. For the mosquito problem I just bought a couple of yards of bridal tule from my local fabric store. I would just drape it over the door frame with the bulk ok of it on the inside. Pulled it tight all around the door frame and shut the doors on it . This way I could open or close the windows easily. No magnets,no sewing, no masking tape. Just a huge piece of netting cut to cover all the windows. Folder it up whenever you’re ready to move out. Another thought about camping as a single woman. Check with the local police as to where is a good,safe cheap place to stay overnight. I’ve found the keep an eye out for you so no one will hassle you this way.
Walli, those are very good tips, thanks for sharing them with us! Bob
We have converted a tour bus into a RV coach – the bus is aluminum and all the windows have rounded corners – any suggestions? Forgot to mention we are in Hawaii so there are plenty of moquitoes, cockroaches and other flying insects in abundance!
Looking on lable it’s .05 permethin I get as horse and fly spray in pet and livestock same mix used it for years
The label warms the permethrin shouldn’t be used on undergarments. Like socks and headwear.