TICKS
Hi all - I know this is always a concern, but for those of you who have been up to the Door already this spring or live there - how bad are the ticks? We live in northern IL and they are unusually bad right now. A friend just pulled 26 off her dog after walking on a paved, wide, forest preserve path, and the local park district actually closed a local wooded area to school trips because the ticks are so prevalent. I have never heard of this happening before - it's very unusual.
I've been reading that people are finding ticks crawling on their blankets in the sand at Nicolet beach, and even at the beach in Sister Bay, and they're on the picnic tables near school house beach. We are considering staying in a bayside house near Sturgeon Bay in mid-June, and won't be doing any hiking. We'll have young kids with us and plan to take a boat tour, visit the Farm, etc. However, I'm absolutely terrified of catching Lyme or other illnesses and am hesitating reading about the increase in tick related ER visits in the area. A friend is a doc near Door county and has said tick bites definitely seem unusually high. Anyone have some recent insight or does it just seem like business as usual? A friend with a home near Sister Bay said Peninsular State Park is bad right now? (please no snarky comments...I know ticks are always as issue, but things are definitely worse right now where I live. I've been visiting Door county my whole life and used to have a home there when I was little, but this wasn't as big an issue then). Thanks so much.