Nothing can spoil a nice relaxing evening around the campfire like a hoard of pesky mosquitos. After we decided last year to spend our camping weekend on an island I figured insect repellent might play an important part. Of course I could have purchased a couple of varieties of aerosols, but I really wanted to try something different.

So I decided to visit my nearest Cabelas store to see what might be available. What peaked my interest was a product called Thermacell . It uses a mat coated with repellent that gets heated by butane. According to the packaging it covers an area of approximately 225sq.ft. or 15ft. in diameter and has an estimated run-time of up to 12 hours.

My experience with the product begins shortly after our arrival on the island. After a quick tour of our surroundings I set to work building our campfire. As the sun retreated the mosquitos invaded and it quickly became very difficult to do anything, so I decided it was time to try out the Thermacell. After reading through the directions I managed to get it set up and running. It took about 20 minutes until we noticed the bugs becoming less numerous and soon the area around the campfire became very comfortable.

Unfortunately the weather the rest of the weekend was cool, rainy and windy; not very good for testing this product. However, what we did was fire up the Thermacell and run it for a few hours every evening just to stay ahead of the mosquitos. Overall I thought the product was effective for that situation where you're not moving around much. The initial setup took a little too much time and we learned anticipation is important. The fact that it is re-usable makes the purchase price reasonable. I would definitely recommend the Thermacell to other outdoor enthusiasts with
some advice.