Baudette, Minnesota
Does anyone on this forum live in the general area of Baudette, or has lived there relatively recently?
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I haven't lived there but have been through the area a few times.
what's up?0 -
Go through there every once in a while. Why do you ask? 0 -
use to hunt in the area.. 0 -
Good High School Hockey team. 0 -
The reason I ask is that we are thinking about spending the summer in that general area, camping, hiking, fishing, etc. and are wondering about the flying and "creepy crawly" pests around there. What prompted this train of thought was the "chiggers" post on this forum. Someone posted that they were from Maine and although they did not have chiggers, they had mosquitos, black flies, deer flies and midges. We spent 3 1/2 years in the late 60s and early 70s at Bemidji, actually a little spot on the map north of Bemidji called Puposky, while I was in college. Worked in a sawmill a couple of summers and for a building contractor the rest of the time. The mosquitos could, at times, be almost overwhelming and ticks were a nuisance, but I don't recall flies being much of a problem. Unfortunately, for me, I am one of those people that can be in a crowd of a thousand and if there is one mosquito, deer fly or whatever, I am the target, to the exclusion of all others. Just curious as much as anything. 0 -
Post script: I finally read your whole post. The area around Baudette is going to be almost identical to Bemidji in terms of creepy-crawlies and weather. Further on in my post you'll see that I reached many of the same conclusions you did about the various bugs. You'll find Baudette a little flatter, a little boggier, and a lot less affluent than Bemidji. You'll find more very large lakes in that area, too. Baudette is just north of the Red Lake Indian Reservation and I've gotta tell you...if you're driving through N MN and happen to pass through that reservation, it feels a lot like visiting a different country. It is a poor, desperate place, and--unless I'm forgetting a major news event--the site of the most recent school shooting in the USA. On the other hand, if you head east rather than south out of Baudette, you'll find towns that are relatively affluent due to the traffic around Voyageurs National Park. I don't know how much of the Red Lake Reservations woes spill over into Baudette.
Original post:
It is a beautiful area. If it were me I might prefer to be a little further east...closer to the Superior National Forest and the North Shore of Lake Superior. There's more topography there. But it's probably more expensive, too.
You won't worry about chiggers in that part of the world. In the spring you will find lots to insane numbers of wood ticks. They're gross and annoying, but they aren't disease vectors. In that part of MN you might also find the occasional deer tick, which can transmit Lyme disease. It would be a rare event: in Baudette you're getting pretty close to the edge of the lyme disease range.
Mosquitoes will be insane at times, but not all of the time. It depends on time of season, time of day, and your particular location as to whether they'll be terrible. Go buy some used white button-down dress shirts from a goodwill or something. These are light, don't absorb much heat from the sun and do a bang-up job of keeping the skeeters off your arms--and they cost about $5 (REI will sell you something fancier for about $50 and maybe it works better, but I doubt it works ten times better). I hate DEET, and have discovered that with a little effort I can ignore the mosquitoes and their bites, for the most part. And then there are black/deer flies. I'm not sure when prime black fly season is, but they are some nasty SOB's when they find you. I've spent a fair amount of time in MN's north woods and have encountered black flies, but it's never been swarms of them. At worst, probably 5 nasty bites in an afternoon.
Let us know what you decide.0 -
I pretty much agree with the above post. Mosquitoes, ticks, and deer flys. I think they live on DEET and blood.Dave[:D] 0
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