Some people love camping and will happily trade their warm bed for a sleeping bag on the ground. As a city girl, I prefer my tents furnished. Specifically, I like those with sofas, such as the one I’m relaxing on now.

It’s a nasty night in the great outdoors, but I’m enjoying the pitter-patter of rain on the roof of the tent. When I look up from my newspaper, my eyes take in the queen-size bed, where I’ll sleep tonight under a toasty comforter, and the kitchenette where I just made a pot of coffee. I don’t even need to leave the tent to go to the bathroom. There’s one built in, complete with a locking door, bathtub, electric heater, and fluffy white towels.

Okay, this is not exactly a tent. But it’s not a cabin either. I’m in a yurt at Riverbend Resort in Parksville, B.C. A yurt is a cross between a tent and a cabin—and staying in one is an experience in itself.

According to the Web site of Yurtco Manufacturing (yurtco.com/), a Canadian company that builds yurts, Mongolians have lived in yurts for thousands of years. They were used by nomadic horse herders because they can be set up and taken down in a matter of hours. The original design consisted of lattice walls, roof beams, a roof ring, a door, and a felt or hide covering.

Yurts today can be basic—little more than a fancy tent—or more elaborate. They’re all distinguished by their round shape. Yurtco’s yurts have a domed roof with a skylight, conical pine ceiling rafters, and two-metre-tall Douglas-fir latticework sides. The outside is made of a special durable vinyl.

Yurts have been common in the U.S. for 25 or 30 years, says Yurtco sales-and-marketing manager Beverley Hamann. “Americans tend to know what they are, because they’ve seen them around,” she tells me by phone from her Burnaby office, after I’ve returned from Parksville. They’re so popular at some Oregon campgrounds, she says, that you now need to reserve them a year in advance.

Yurtco started up in B.C. five years ago. The company sells yurts to land developers, who use them as temporary sales offices. The Whistler, Mount Seymour, and Sun Peaks ski hills use them as warm-up huts. Three years ago, Yurtco started providing yurts to campgrounds in B.C.

Resorts are the latest accommodations to pick up the trend. “Our sales [to resorts] increase exponentially every year,” Hamann says. “They order three to test the waters, and pretty soon they call back and order three more.…People prefer to rent a yurt over a regular building, because of the feel and the uniqueness of them. And they have an ambiance inside that’s really amazing due to the roundness of the building.”

Hamann explains that resorts can buy a yurt for less than half the price of a cabin, and yurts bring in just as much income and are versatile. “They don’t leave any imprint on the ground, so they’re ecologically friendly. You don’t have to pour concrete foundations, so you can put them in locations where perhaps you wouldn’t be able to put a regular building.” (They sit on concrete blocks or cement pads.)

Yurts range from three-and-a-half metres to eight-and-a-half metres in diameter, and cost between $5,000 to $25,000, depending on the luxuries desired. Options include heavy-duty insulation in the floors and ceilings, double-paned glass windows, and French doors. They can be fitted for plumbing, electricity, even air- conditioning or a wood-burning stove. They’re also relatively quick to assemble. “It actually takes two of our guys 10 hours to put up the biggest one,” Hamann says.

Heather Powell, co-owner of the Riverbend Resort in Parksville, bought three Yurtco yurts last October. Her resort offers log cabins and RV sites, but she is already planning to add more yurts in the fall. Guests’ reactions have been positive.

“I love the shock factor.…It’s something unexpected,” she tells me as she opens the door to the yurt where I’ll be hosted for the night. She has invested in some serious insulation, put down sleek laminate flooring, and decorated the place with attractive jewel tones. At just over seven metres in diameter, the yurt is huge and airy, with a glass dome that can be cranked open and space heaters for chilly nights. It has all the comforts of home, including a convection oven, a stove top, and cable television. You can actually watch the Food Network while camping.

Of course, some people camp specifically to get away from TV. So I understand when, days later, I check into a yurt at Soule Creek Lodge in Port Renfrew and discover there isn’t one. Co-owner Jon Cash tells me he wanted a get-away-from-it-all experience. “That’s one of the realities of the structure,” he says of the yurt. “When you’re inside, you feel like you’re inside.…You don’t realize there’s no sound barrier.”

The six-metre yurt Cash puts me up in is comfortable but not elegant. With basic insulation and plywood floors, it’s furnished with a rustic double bed and a bunk bed, as well as a leather sofa. Tucked in that night, I gaze at the stars through the yurt’s skylight—my very own little planetarium. A coffeemaker and microwave occupy a nook, and a door leads from the yurt to an attached bathroom with a shower.

Soule Creek’s two yurts are perched on wooden platforms high on a hill overlooking the San Juan Bay. It’s a spectacular view in one direction. Unfortunately, it’s an equally spectacular panorama of a clear-cut in the other. The area was logged in 1989 with no requirement to be replanted. The thousand-odd trees Cash put in when he bought the property five years ago hardly make a dent. The raw stumpage shocks me. Even with a yurt, location matters.

Cash and his brother, Tim (the resort’s co-owner), erected the yurts themselves from a kit last year. A learning curve meant the first took four days to put up, but the second took just half a day. The yurts took a beating over the winter, but 120-kilometre-per-hour gusts that knocked tiles off the main lodge’s roof left the them unscathed.

It’s hard to explain the structure over the phone, Cash says, but “when people see them, they love them.” Guests who show up with reservations for the lodge ask to rebook into the yurts.

There’s something about the novelty of yurts that makes them great places to stay. From simple shelters to five-star suites, they have unlimited potential. Riverbend’s Powell says she can’t stop thinking about the next one. “I’m picturing a loft,” she says with a laugh.

ACCESS: To find yurts in B.C. provincial parks, see: env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/recreation/now_in_parks .html.

Yurts at Goldstream Provincial Park near Victoria cost $50 and can sleep four.

For yurt camping in Washington State Parks, see: parks.wa.gov/yurtcabn.asp, and in Oregon, see oregon.gov/OPRD/PARKS/rustic.shtml.

Riverbend Resort in Parksville is located at 1-924 East Island Highway. Call 1-800-701-3033 or visit riverbendresort.bc.ca/. Yurts are normally $129 each per night, but a special rate of $99 a night is on throughout June.

Soule Creek Lodge in Port Renfrew charges $155 per night per yurt, including breakfast, for two people from May 25 until September 31. For more information, see soulecreek lodge.com/ or call 1-866-277-6853.

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