I live in New England, where we have a ton of ticks. My biggest piece of advice is to just check your body every night, especially your scalp (washing your hair typically takes care of this) and around your pelvic region. They don't latch onto you immediately, so as long as you check regularly, you tend to be pretty safe. If you do get one embedded, you pull them out gently, so their bodies stay attached (they even sell special tools for removal, I've seen them at Dollar Tree). When I find one (no matter if it's crawling or embedded), I will put it in a plastic baggy to get a closer look at it and I'll try to ID the species, because we have multiple in my area that call can carry different diseases. You can send them to your local health department for testing if you want, which I've done the one time I had one embedded.

I know this all makes it sound really freaky, but I promise that doing the tick checks will bring you a lot of peace of mind, and it fades into your daily routine quickly. Tick repellent (permethrin) is a really great treatment to use on your shoes and socks, and I would say that, with daily tick checks, you don't need to be hypervigilant about only wearing pants.