Most Memorable Travel day Yet- Mosquito Alley

We recently experienced our most memorable travel day. Ever. It started out as a great day and ended as... well you will find out soon. It started out as a normal day. We left our previous overnight and headed out to keep on our way to Alaska. Our goal was Dawson city, YK from Whitehorse, YK. It was about 250 miles. We made a handful of educational stops along the way, resulting in us having to stop sooner than our destination. We decided to boondock on the side of the road at Gravel Lake.... REALLY. BAD. IDEA!!! While we were setting up, we realized there was a TON of mosquitoes!!
See all the black dots on our door? Those are all mosquitoes!! 
It was so bad! Like, use a half a bottle of bug spray and cover every inch of skin just to survive any potential attacks bad... No, I'm not kidding! Although we longed for the safety from these menacing creatures that our trailers provided, our stomachs disagreed and demanded we make dinner. Ironically we chose to Barbecue that night, so we hung out with the mosquitoes a while longer. I'd like to pause my story here for a minute to share my appreciation for our family bug zapper. It's a tennis racket like design but the racket is electrically charged metal. I'm at a loss for words to describe how amazing this tool is, and how satisfying it is to use. When you hold down a button, it charges the metal. Then when you hit the bug it electrifies it! This causes the bug to either disintegrate or sizzle and pop until it falls to the ground. Leaving the murder cackling in delight at having revenge on mosquito kind. So that's my handy dandy zapper. Anyhow, while making dinner my dad perfected his ninja/tennis skills keeping the swarming pests away from our fragrant dinner. As soon as the meal was ready, we retreated to our trailer to hide from the mosquitoes. Although it wasn't much better once we were inside... (see photo above) Since we didn't dare brave the outside world just then, we stayed inside the rest of the night. With the exception of an extremely short dog potty walk. A movie was agreed apon and so was a bug patrol rotation. Someone had the zapper at all times to fend off unwanted company, and after a while it would switch to a new person. There wasn't that many mosquitoes inside at that point, so just then it was pretty much a sport. Patrol the house and obliterate mosquitoes. It was fun at quite satisfying. However, as the night wore on, the population of mosquitoes slowly grew until we were invaded. (Needless to say it was no longer fun to just zap the mosquitoes, now it was a matter of life and death.) The destruction rate was about 20 per minute, or sometimes more. We were terribly confused. We had not gone outside... so how were these pests getting inside? (Later we found the source of the problem. A gap in the wall. It was sealed immediately.) It just went downhill from there. We were being invaded and spent the majority of the night running the zapper back and forth across the house. At 1:30 the next morning we couldn't take it anymore. We were being eaten alive, dogs included, and couldn't sleep or seem to finish off the mosquitoes. So we turned to our last resort. Moving. A note* was written to the family we are caravaning with, and taped to their door. Then we fired up tiny (our truck) to hitch and move. Within 10 seconds of turning the truck on, they emerged from the trailer stating that they have been overrun as well, and would be moving with us. For all of y'all who were wondering, this is how dark it is outside, in Alaska, at 1:30 in the morning.
Looking back I believe that A) that is the first time we have moved so early and B) we have never packed up to move so fast. Everything was shoved wherever it would be secure, and we moved 20 minutes later. After arriving at our new overnight, we had to set up and kill off the rest of the mosquitoes. It took a while, but we finally crawled into bed at 3:30 mosquito free**


*Funny story, our friends actually kept the note we wrote them, and taped it to their fridge. I'm not completely sure why. Most likely because now we look back and laugh about that time that we moved at 2 o'clock in the morning.

**Or so we thought, we were still getting bitten for about 5 days afterward, but it was substantially better than "Mosquito Alley"

Comments

  1. That was not only an excellent read but an accurate retelling of the events that unfolded that night. I've got my own post brewing for this evening and when I post it I'll try to remember to link to your post as well for cross-referencing :). I kept the note 1) for fun and 2) so that I could take a photo of it for my own blog post.

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  2. Wow, you captured the moment and feelings so acurately. Living through this experience and reading this now, I was able to crack up without the reminder of multiple itchy bites all over my body! Great job!

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