Cooking & Lighting

The cooking setup in the yurt leaves a lot to be desired. This is the biggest weak link in the whole arrangement. Yes, a Coleman stove is provided. You are supposed to bring your own little green propane bottles. Here's the problem: all sorts of people are using this stove.

If you know anything at all about small camp stove, you know the weakest part of the stove is the threaded fitting into which you screw the propane bottle. Unless you are really careful and paying attention, it's all too easy to cross thread the bottle into the fitting. The fitting is made of soft metal and the threads on the bottles are a harder metal. This is not a good combination!

Luckily, we assumed that the threads on the stove fitting would be buggered up. We brought a roll of plumbers teflon tape. I feel pretty certain we would not have got a tight seal without the teflon tape. I was very paranoid about that situation for our whole trip. Everytime I lit the stove, I was half expecting to see big flames shooting out the junction of the bottle and the fitting. The first time we lit it, I had Susun stand by with the fire extinguisher in hand. There's really no way to know if the last visitor was ham-handed and impatient. It's a crap shoot. You might show up and have no stove because the bottle won't fit properly.

Our "workaround" for this potential situation will be to simply take our own stove along and keep it in the truck. If we find that we can't safely get the yurt stove working, we'll just go get our own stove. At least we'd have an option. Be sure to take some fresh matches!

Yes, there is a propane light in the yurt. It's what I would call an "area light." It will definitely provide a nice even light suitable for just about all indoor activities. Unless you take it off it's hanger, it's not a good reading light. Note that the lantern can be adjusted with a rope that's secured over by the wood box. We brought our own single mantle lantern and we're really glad we did. It's a great light for playing cribbage, reading, etc. It's not blindingly bright and it will use only about one canister of propane every two days.

Note that the park does provide spare mantle for the yurt lantern. That's a nice touch. If you've never put on a new mantle, you are in for a fun treat. Please DO attempt to burn in the new mantle outside the yurt. There's all kind of toxins in those mantles and the fumes are best kept outdoors.

I took a picture of some of the various lighting stuff we brought. Those small tea light candles in an IKEA glass holder really add a romantic touch to the yurt. They take up almost no space, weigh next to nothing and they are safe if used properly. We took our own fresh matches as well as two butane clickers. No worries about an ignition source. We also took two LED headlamps and two small LED flashlights. The teflon tape shows up in the photo. The other object is a digital humidity monitor and a min-max thermometer. It's nice to know your inside overnight low and your daily high. We had a 2nd thermometer inside the food box, too. It's been our experience that at least one headlamp or flashlight will get misplaced on any given two night trip. Hence, we bring four so we always have one available. Definitely bring at least one headlamp--it makes messing around with the fire at night SO much easier!

Another note about the stove. This particular Coleman stove is very difficult to simmer on a low flame. it's designed to blast out high heat and boil water in a hurry. We forgot our flame tender on this trip and that's not a mistake we will make again. Having a flame tender renders these aggressive stoves tame as a kitten and makes perking coffee or simmering a gumbo a piece of cake!