We have lots of mosquitoes in our Okanogan Valley. When we lived in the city of Okanogan there were times of the year that we would get eaten alive by the mosquitoes! Then usually the cities of Okanogan and Omak would contract with the arial pesticide companies flying the bi-wing airplanes that did the crop dusting. They would fly up and down the river spraying the mosquitoes. We would all have fewer mosquitoes then, but we would have that stuff in the air to breath and in the water for pollution.
The years we lived in the Stehekin Valley with had varied experiences with the mosquitoes. The first couple of years we lived at the boat landing area during the winter. The winds there drove all the mosquitoes away, so very seldom would anyone get bitten by a misquito at the boat landing area. Out at the end of the lake there were a lot of swampy areas, and they bred mosquitos. When I gave my tours I told that people that was mosquito lane, and though that was a fictitious name, it really was mosquito lane with billions and billions of the little insects. There were times that some people could not even bare to walk in that area. The bakery was right at the end of that mosquito area, and they had everything well screened so that you could get away from the yellow jackets, wasps, hornets, biting flies, and the mosquitoes.
Where we lived in the summer during those first couple of years the mosquitoes were every bit that bad. If we let any of them in the house after 9 p.m. we could not sleep until amost morning for mosquitoes biting us. When you were working on a car motor the mosquitoes knew it and they would go on the attack.
The mosquitoes in our area as far as I know are not disease carriers. I can't remember hearing of anyone getting any kind of disease from misquitoes in our area either the Stehekin Valley or the Okanogan Valley. Some people in our area take garlic pills to repulse the misquitoes. The misquitoes would eat my dad alive, and they would never bit my mother, and they thought it was because she was a small part Indian, but I don't know if there is any truth to that or not. The misquitoes will eat my wife and some of our kids alive, but they hardly even bother me. I'm not very fond of the misquitoes anyway.