Alaskan insects

Mark Brader wrote:
> Judy Heuman:
>
> > > Is this true? Someone told me there are
> > > horrible biting insects in Alaska in the
> > > summer time.  We are going on a cruise in July ...

By July, I would expect to have the mosquitos swarming pretty thick in
the back country. Near the water may be a different story.


> There were no bothersome insects when my wife
> and I did an Alaska cruise in 1994.  That was
> in mid-to-late June.  Did we manage to just miss the
> insect season?  Our ports of call in Alaska
> were Sitka, Haines, Skagway, Juneau, Wrangell,
> and Ketchikan.

I had a relatively similar experience a few years ago at the same time
of year: a mid/late June trip.

The the "by water" parts of the trip came first and were bug-free, so
I'm not quite sure if this was because its usually cooler near water
or not, but the first few days of our inland portion was also not
buggy. We then had two distinct hatchings hit in ~3 days, and on our
last night in the fly-in camp, the staff commented that that week had
been the first hatchings of the season.

While DEET formulas kept the mosquitoes from biting, it didn't really
keep them from swarming. But consider yourself fortunate in that DEET
at least does that much ...there's no repellant that's really
effective against the Testse Fly in Africa, and their bite is as nasty
as the Greenhead horseflies of the mid-Atlantic coast (NJ, DE, MD, VA,
etc). Except for sleeping disease, they're effectively brothers.


-hh

Took a two week RV trip in Alaska interior (Kenai, Denali, Fairbanks)
last summer, late June and early July. Yep, plenty of insects around
every campsite. Based on feedback that we read about before going,
we purchased outfits (shirts/pants/socks) that have insect repellent
built in ( I believe the brand was buzzoff ) as I wasn't too keen on
spraying repellent everytime I wanted to hike around.

At most, we just rubbed a little repellent around our necks, and on
our hats, and that combination with the clothes kept us comfortable on
our hikes. One of the last days, my shirt was getting a bit soiled,
so I tried one of my regular shirts. Was miserable on that hike, so
either we ran into particularly nasty skeeters, or the special shirt
made the difference.

They're not cheap, but I'd suggest the clothes if your going to spend
much time hiking around outside in Alaska (and that's why anyone is
going there, right?)

As for needing such on a cruise, haven't taken one yet, so not sure
how much bug exposure you'll have. I take that back, we did take an
all day cruise out of Seward to watch glaciers, and I didn't recall
any issues with bugs that day on the ship, both personally and
watching others.