Any ideas about long-term camping in a 16x16 foot yurt?

Question

My husband and I will be retiring soon and will spend 5 months of the year in a bricks and mortar house. The other 7 months, we'll be gypsying. We don't want to deal with the complexities and expense (both initial and ongoing fuel costs) of an RV. We DO want some space to stretch out. We are long-time, avid tent campers and are thinking about doing our roadtrips in a camping yurt. We'd stay no less than 2 weeks in each site and carry a small tent for overnight stops. We plan to pull a small trailer with our gear. Any thoughts? (Have we completely lost our minds?)

Answer 1

When I was younger I used to sleep in yurts as a scout. Things I would consider important:

Staying dry can be difficult

Depending strongly on the actual yurt (and the weather of course) sometimes it can be struggling to stay dry inside it. If it is made of cotton you have to pay attention nothing touches walls or roof because water would enter there. Seams and joints can let in water to. Most yurts don´t bring a flooring with them, so after extensive rain streams could go through your tent.

Paying attention to your tent

Why with most camping tents you only have to set them up and then are done for the next week, a yurt needs regular "service". Lines get loose, the plane gets bulges (great places for rainwater to gather and drop through to the inside), the pegs would get loose. While it isn´t much work, you should not neglect it.

Bugs visiting

A yurt will give only marginal protection against bugs. You can use mosquito-nets for sleeping, but the rest of the tent can be crowded with gnats.

Temperature

A yurt is not as technical as many modern tents. It depends strongly on the color and if there is a hole for (smoke) ventilation in the middle, but our black tents got warmed up by the sun really fast. While in spring and fall this was a nice feature, in summer it was certainly not. Anyhow, considering the size of the yurt, you only beeing two persons and that air ventilation in yurt is a lot better than in normal tents, I would rather think about beeing too cold. Even if you don´t use it through winter you should think about heating, because there is no chance to warm up a tent of that size just by yourselves.

Setting it up by two persons

Depending a little bit on the actual design you will use, setting it up by only two persons could be challenging.

Bring your stuff

Probably its not necessary to mention it: You need a lot of poles of different sizes. While we would get them from the woulds, this is probably no good idea at camping sites. Also it takes quite some time - you should bring them yourself. And they can be very long. The central poles we used (two or three) were at least 4-5m high, and I think our yurts were smaller.

Try it out

I don´t want to discourage you, but I think there are some reason one can find a yurt challenging. I would suggest you try it before you decide - best would be on rough conditions (e. g. cold and rainy).

I hope you find that it suits you, because a yurt really is a great place to sleep (and to call home, I imagine)!