A product sample from the company I hear tell the parks department in Santa Clara County wants to put up 24 yurts in five of the county’s parks. Here’s a link to the proposal. Estimated cost: $832,000 (a handy illustration of housing costs around here: A Mongolian-style tent on a raised platform will set you back 34 grand — the county could buy barely used second-hand camping trailers for much, much less, but hey, yurts are the in thing these days).
Current plan is to put them in parks that already have campgrounds — Sanborn Skyline, Uvas Canyon, Grant Ranch, Coyote Lake, Mount Madonna — but that issue isn’t settled. Heck, Grant Ranch is big enough that you could have yurt-to-yurt hikes, just like in Mongolia, but minus the horsemen.
A colleague at the paper is working on a story about the yurt plan and is interested in the opinions of hard-core campers who’ve used the county parks, and specifically whether they think much of the idea. Use the comments to weigh in, and perhaps you’ll see your name in the paper in the next few days.
With any luck I’ll remember to link to the story when it actually runs.
(Here’s a PDF of the Yurt Feasibility Study … tons o’ interesting facts in there)
“Publicly subsidized glamping?”
I do say that rather sarcastically. I do want to acknowledge places like boy and girl scout camps, private resorts licensed on non-wilderness public lands, and even places like UC-system field campuses provide semi-permanent tent shelters as lodging. There certainly is a place for these. And anyway, in many non-wilderness car-camping situations, people are so concentrated in well-defined spaces that the environmental impact might be less if there was a semi-permanent structure there.
I’ve read that the Santa Clara County park system is a bit more flush with funds than the state park system right now, so I suppose that they’re trying to figure out where to spend their surplus. I’m not opposed to the idea. Indeed, many nature-estranged urbanites with pastoral paranoia need to be eased into this camping thing. A fixed tent might just be what some people need to get them out.
The only one of these county parks I’ve ever camped in is Grant Ranch, because I can bicycle to there from my home easily enough, and because they have astronomy programs there. I’d rather these yurts be located in a separate “lodging area” though, rather than in the supposedly more primitive campgrounds. But then again, Grant Ranch is big enough to have a backcountry campground; why doesn’t it?
I don’t know what they’re going to charge to rent these things, but let’s assume $40/night. For comparison, I made a quick check of my local uber-discount-retailer. Let’s say a family of four is going to spend $40/night to rent one of these yurts, and they go two nights per weekend, twice each year. For that $160, they can buy a 6-person tent ($30), 4 sleeping bags ($15 each), 4 air beds ($10 each), and still have almost $30 left after sales taxes for other minor amenities such as picnic or cooking gear. And then they could go to any campground they wanted!
A system of yurts and cabins works well in the popular Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park near where I live. The area is large enough to provide for quality backcountry camping as well as hike or canoe in cabins and yurts. They are not too imposing on the landscape and provide the opportunity for people to try out a more luxurious form of backpacking.
If the parks department’s projections hold, the yurts should turn a profit, so it’s not exactly subsidized (except by their ownership of the land).
The main motivation is to attract campers during the spring and fall “shoulder” seasons who otherwise wouldn’t camp out.
Mount Madonna would get almost half because it’s the most likely locale — cold air and fog from the ocean.
I think some families would pay the yurt fee so they didn’t have to buy & store all that stuff.
tom Says: “I think some families would pay the yurt fee so they didn’t have to buy & store all that stuff.”
You might be right. But by my own logic, I can’t see paying a fee for an intangible service when for the same money I can get durable goods that will give me what that service would have provided for many more times in the future.
Here in MD, the state parks have put in small cabins with AC and wireless internet. In an effort to attract people. I do not know if your parks have a declining amount of use. But it is a nationwide trend. Here is a link to an article about Americans not going into the wilderness.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-americans-afraid-of-the-outdoors
Yurts approved on Feb 12th by Santa Clara County supervisors:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8238011
I believe the idea was proposed with the expectation that it would increase usage of the county campsites. Further, at a nightly fee of $32-42, the payback (dare I say return on investment?) from the revenue would take a little over a year, which seems like a terrific deal for taxpayers. Hopefully they will use the ongoing revenue for other improvments to the parks.
In Europe, many commercial camping sites have permanent or semi-permanent structures available for rent.
I like the idea — more families will probably try ‘camping’ and later find that they enjoy it and invest in their own gear. The yurts could also be a relatively inexpensive alternative to motels and hostels for people visiting the Bay Area for a day trip. Of course, I would want the yurts to blend into the environment and not stand out too much.