Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Anyway, time to share the rest of the (real) story.
The reason these sores/bites/whatever were so inconvenient was because they showed up when I was in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada.
I took a 2-week trip to Kamloops (British Columbia), Mt. Robson, Jasper, Banff, Waterton, Montana, Yellowstone, and Salt Lake City.
I got absolutely hammered by mosquitoes on a trail near Mt. Robson on Monday night, and I also was bitten in the Fraser Valley (between Vancouver and Kamloops) the day before. The long, skinny mark appeared on Monday (though it started out looking like a bite), and the two raised ones appeared on Tuesday.
It was a pain in the ass finding a doctor in that area. Had to go to Canmore, which was 25 miles south of Banff, and I had to talk them into letting me make an appointment instead of being a "walk in" and waiting for hours. I coughed up $100 Canadian for the visit.
I will post a trip report later. Basically it was a 1-way road trip starting in Seattle (didn't stay there, just flew in and drove) and ending in Salt Lake.
I had two health concerns coming into the trip -- a cold, which I had for about a week, and back problems, which I had for about 3 weeks. The cold was mostly gone and was never an issue. The back problems were terrible for the first 3 days, but abruptly subsided right when the skin problems with my hand started.
I do think I discovered that I am allergic (at least to some degree) to mosquito bites. For most of my life, mosquito bites were itchy and annoying, but looked and felt normal. In the past 5 years or so, mosquito bites often became huge, red, and hot, which was a departure from how they used to be. On this trip, I had the worst reaction yet to them -- and not just the ones on my hand. I also had problematic bites on my legs, stomach, and arm. I'm not sure why this changed, but I heard that this can happen.
I did use mosquito repellent, but it was mostly a fail. Maybe I will try a different version of it next time.
Shout out to the 80 MPH speed limits in Idaho and Utah.