Nico does an impression of me at camp. He slaps his own neck, then his ankle, then his neck again, and says "they're not that bad" in a deep voice. It's accurate. I've been losing to Florida mosquitoes since our first trip, and on Saturday I finally spent $239 to stop pretending otherwise.
What we tried first
For two years we threw cheaper fixes at the problem. Here's our honest scorecard:
- Bug spray. It works, mostly, for a while. For the kids we use what our pediatrician recommended and follow the label. The trouble is that everything after dusk tastes a little like it.
- Mosquito coils. Cheap and smoky. With the breeze behind us they helped. Without it, the smoke went straight into Dana's face, and she has opinions about breathing smoke that I don't argue with.
- Long sleeves. Great in January. Not an option at 84 degrees.
- The Thermacell E55, $39 in June. Better than I expected on still nights. At O'Leno the mosquitoes around our picnic table mostly gave up. On breezy nights it barely kept up, and the sand gnats at Skidaway ignored it completely.
Every one of those helped a little. None of them let us sit at the table after sunset and eat dinner like regular people.
Why a screen shelter, and why this one
The idea is simple: a room made of mesh that goes over the camp table, with a door that zips. We'd seen them at other sites for years and figured they were for people with more room in the car than we have. What changed my mind was the trip log. Looking back through it, on almost every trip outside of deep winter the worst hour of the day was dusk, exactly when we're cooking, eating and getting two kids ready for bed.
We looked at cheaper canopy-style screen houses with poles, and at hub-style shelters that pop open. The pole ones cost about half as much, but I've threaded enough poles at dusk with mosquitoes on my neck to know which one I'd regret. On Saturday, October 18, we bought a Clam Quick-Set Escape at Academy Sports + Outdoors. It was on sale for $239, which still made me swallow hard at the register.
Three evenings in the backyard
Our next trip is still a few weeks out, so the first test was our own yard. After a wet week, Kendall at dusk has mosquitoes as bad as anywhere we've camped.
The first setup, with the instructions open on my phone, took about four minutes. It comes out of the bag as a folded bundle with a hub on each wall. You stake a couple of corners, pull each hub out until it pops, and the walls snap tight. By the third evening I had it down to about 90 seconds. Getting it back into the bag took me three tries and a few words Maya wrote down for later.
Inside, it holds our wooden slat-top table, four camp chairs and the cooler, with room to walk around. We ate dinner in it Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I hung the battery lantern from a loop at the top, and the whole thing glowed like a paper lamp in the dark yard. Outside the mesh you could hear the mosquitoes, that thin whine right at ear level. Inside, nobody slapped anything for an hour. Nico asked if we could sleep in it. We could not.
The tradeoffs
- It's big in the car. The bag is long and heavy, and it takes the spot where a duffel used to ride. Something else will have to stay home.
- Zipper discipline. It only works if the door gets zipped every single time. Nico is now the official zipper monitor, a job he likes almost as much as kindling manager.
- Wind. It needs its stakes and guy lines on a breezy night. I haven't tested it in a real wind, and I'm a little nervous about the Keys.
- No-see-ums. The mesh looks fine to me, but I don't know yet whether it's fine enough for the tiniest biters. Maya will tell us. Loudly.
Its first real trip is Myakka in November. I've already pictured that evening: chili in the skillet, the lantern hanging from the top, two kids playing cards at the table, and nobody doing my impression.
