The Dirt on the Yurt

I have returned from my Yurting, and had a good time (although my wife would certainly have enjoyed the Ritz-Carlton better). The weather was hot, the bugs were biting, and the lake was ice-cold, but I managed to get my wife to go camping, and that makes it all worth while!

We were delayed by endless road construction, and what should have taken 4 hours took 6. The campground was crowded with holiday merrymakers, and our host was a nice guy, although he was stressed and harried by the endless flood of campers arriving. We stayed at a place called Caplinger Woods, which lay on the Sac river just a couple of miles below the dam for Lake Stockton. The river was low and muddy because the Corps of Engineers had to stabilize the water levels on the lake, but it was warm enough to swim-which surprised me, since it is water coming from the bottom of the lake. You couldn`t really swim at our campgrounds; it was just too shallow for anything but wading. There was a small mill dam with a mill-pond upstream, but I didn`t go there because it was too crowded.

The Yurt itself was pretty nice; it was constructed of a wooden frame with a circular lattice wall, and roof rafters which hook to a wire woven into the top of the latticework. The other end of the rafters connect to a round collar at the top of the roof, and a large bubble skylight rests on top of the collar. The Yurt had electricity, and a ceiling fan could be turned on beneath the skylight to bring in fresh air (the skylight opens with a crank.) Windows are sewn into the Yurt`s cover, and they opened and closed with flaps like any other tent. It sat on a wooden deck, so it had a real floor. This, along with a lockable wooden door made the Yurt closer to a cabin then tent.

Inside there was a futon, a double bunk bed, a table and chairs, and a dresser. The owner could easily have installed a window air conditioner had he wanted to-and given the 90* plus afternoons I dearly wish he had! Still, it wasn`t too bad.

Unfortunately, some moths and a junebug got into the Yurt, and my wife had a miserable night (she hates bugs) since the junebug kept buzzing around. I would have slept better had I not been worried about her, but what the heck!

We wound up not spending a lot of time outside the next day; we traveled the area, checking out some of the small, historic communities. I was particularly eager to visit Osceola, which was burned to the ground in 1861 by James Lane`s Kansas Jayhawker. It was odd; we visited the town square and the courthouse had an historical marker on the front lawn, but no mention was made of Lane`s atrocity. I had wanted to see remnants of the town from before the torching, but there were none to be found. We ended up visiting antique shops and a cheese factory, instead.

(The cheese factory was fun; it was stuffed with people who ate the free samples like pigs at a trough!)

Our last night we had to move out of the Yurt (due to guests who booked ahead of us) and into the teepee. The teepee was, well, a rather shabby affair without a drip-cloth inside, and with no electricity. As night fell, my wife became more apprehensive (the open smoke-hole and lack of a door disturbed her, as did the moths fluttering around.) I had brought an inflatable mattress, but she simply couldn`t bring herself to sleep on the ground, so she spent the night in the car. I slept like a baby, since I had the mattress all to myself!

The only problem was that the teepee was the last campsite on the trail to the millpond, and across the millpond was another campground. This camp was full of rowdies, since it had no facilities (except a port-a-pottie) and was probably very cheap, and people from our camp went over to party with this bunch. They all came staggering back to camp about midnight or so, drunk and dazed, and they ALL stumbled through the teepee site. Luckily, nobody messed with any of my gear, but a few of them decided to make a biological pit-stop not far from my camp. I guess that`s to be expected on a holiday weekend.

At any rate, it was a fun time (at least for me!) Blogging may still be a bit light until I get everything put away and recover.