We got up one morning and decided to go exploring around Turtle River State Park. We had heard that there are lots of ticks there so we put on long clothes and pulled our socks over our pants and bug sprayed it up. We really enjoyed our morning! It was so pretty! We were there for quite a while and we only came across 2 ticks. So we packed up to go home, have lunch and then come back later. (Mostly because I brought my new camera but left the battery at home so it was no good to me. Oops.)
We went back later after lunch to take a different trail around the water. That's when we encountered many, many ticks. I spent the whole time checking down at my socks every few minutes and swiping at least 3 of them off of me. Kadee and Jackson didn't have too many and they never got much further than anyone's socks. We wore lighter colors then too and it was sure a good thing! But I had it the worst. The ticks really liked my socks. They were all over them! And my shoe laces too. Kadee has velcro shoes and I think that really worked to her advantage. When we got back around to the car we checked everyone for ticks. But the time we were all done we had counted 23 ticks. A couple of them found there way into the car on the way home too. So in the garage, everyone threw off their shoes, we stripped everyone down in the laundry room, and all the clothes went straight into the washer. Then we had to do a really thorough tick check. We all made it out ok, but I'm not too ready to do that again any time soon. The water and tall grasses got us for sure!
Kadee did have 1 tick that found its way into her hair a week later. It was HUGE! I thought she had a bean or something stuck in her hair and I tried to brush it out but then I noticed it had legs. I freaked out on the inside but I didn't want Kadee to be scared. So I called Spencer at work and he met me in the parking lot. I brought a pair of tweezers and he got that sucker out. Then he stuck it in a baggie and took it into the Pediatrician to look at. He said she was probably fine and we just had to keep an eye on the bite. But everything turned out fine. I was very paranoid for a long time after that but luckily we haven't had any more problems.
