Bugs!

[Tater]

We went camping, the family and I, and were all set for a nice relaxing weekend on the lake...my kayak, some fishing roasting marshmallows under the stars. We had an unusually wet spring in this area and it never occured to me that it would have this kind of effect. We set up camp and noticed the bugs. No problem, we got bug spray. Evidently, nobody told the skeeters that they're not supposed to like this stuff. We ended up in the tent before the sun was all the was down cuz the damn things would not leave us alone. The family next to us was smarter cuz they packed up and left shortly after lunch. We woke up this morning to more swarming bug and I said screw it (that's not exactly what I said), we're going home. We headed down and I spent half the trip apologizing to my kids for not calling ahead to have the skeeter problem fixed before we got there and the other half of the trip apologizing to my wife for being such an ass this morning. We did, however, see a few nice muley does on the way down and we stopped at the reservior and let the boys get wet and throw rocks so it wasn't a total waste. My older boy is old enough to understand that things don't always go the way we want them and my younger boy has a pretty short memory for things like this so I don't think it will be a problem in the future. Next time, we'll bring Ben's insect repellant.

[DaMadman]

Sassafrass leaves are a great natural insect repellant. If you can get some green leaves from a sassafrass tree and mash them up and rub them on yourself and anything else around the camp it normally controls the skeeters prety well. Of course a good can of Deep Woods OFF with a healthy dose of DEET works wonders too