Oregon Coast -- Shelter From The Storm -- Staying In A Yurt In Fort Stevens State Park

If we'd been tent-camping, we would have given up and gone to a motel to escape the lashing rain and howling winds of a Pacific coast storm.

But my family had rented a yurt for the night in Fort Stevens State Park on the northern Oregon coast, and we were snug and dry.

Yurts - sturdy, one-room, circular tent-cabins - make off-season camping in the Northwest a pleasure.

All you need to bring is bedding - sheets and blankets if you don't have sleeping bags - and food. And the lockable doors give a sense of security to women travelers or single mothers with kids who might not feel comfortable in a flimsy tent in a dark campground.

Oregon pioneered the use of yurts in state parks. It now has 82, most of them at parks along the Pacific coast. Washington has just a handful so far, but is considering installing more.

"It's a no-fuss way to camp. And it gets people out camping who've never tried it before and don't own the gear," said Craig Tutor, public-services manager for Oregon State Parks, which opened its first yurts in 1994. "If we had another 100 yurts we could fill them up."

The yurts in Oregon and Washington can sleep up to five people, cost about $27 to $35 a night and can be reserved. They're modeled on tents that have been home for centuries to northern Asian nomads in Mongolia.

Mongolian yurts are made of felt or skins and carpeted with rugs; the Northwest recreational yurts are canvas with a wood frame and wood floors. A plexiglass skylight at the top of the 10-foot-high conical roof lets campers lay in bed and look at the stars - or the rain.

Yurts are a step up from tent camping, but their comforts remain simple.

Each of the nine yurts at Fort Stevens and other campgrounds has an electric light and small electric heater. But there's no running water inside. Toilets are down a trail in restroom buildings, and cooking must be done outside the yurt because of fire danger. Each yurt has a fire pit and picnic table.

Furnishings are basic. A fold-out futon couch can sleep two people, a bunk bed sleeps two on its lower double bunk and one on the upper bunk. A coffee table completes the furnishings.

Although the 16-foot-diameter yurt has beds for five, that's a crowd. It's better with three or four people, deluxe (by camping standards) for a couple.

Exploring the park

Fort Stevens and its yurts are a 10-minute drive west of Astoria and are a good base for exploring that historic town and the nearby Fort Clatsop National Historic Site, the reconstructed log stockade where explorers Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1805-06.

But Fort Stevens itself could easily occupy visitors for a few days. Its 3,760 acres front the Pacific and the mouth of the Columbia River. There are miles of sandy beach and dunes; scrubby pine and spruce forests bent by the salt-laden winds; an old military fort; and wetlands that teem with birds.

Bring bikes to explore its 9 1/2 miles of flat biking trails and sturdy shoes for walking the beach. Most beach walkers head first to the rusting wreck of the Peter Iredale, a British sailing ship that went aground in 1906 (all the crew was rescued). After decades of battering by the waves, only the ship's metal ribs remain, thrusting out of the sand.

In the park's interior, a small military museum commemorates the site's long service in defense of the United States with displays of old photos, maps and equipment.

Fort Stevens was established as a military base in the 1860s to protect the mouth of the Columbia from Confederate gun boats during the Civil War. (The park is named after General Isaac Stevens, the first governor of Washington Territory who died a hero in the Civil War.) The military buildings were expanded during World War II for defense against the Japanese. (A Japanese submarine fired on the fort during the war, but was too far offshore to do any damage.)

In these more peaceful times, Fort Stevens is a haven for winter-storm watchers and nature lovers. Migratory gray whales can sometimes be seen offshore in winter; sandpipers, terns, pintails, peregrine falcons and gulls galore flock to its beaches and wetlands.

The only drawback some walkers and bird-watchers will find is that cars are allowed to drive on some parts of Fort Stevens' beaches. After watching a sport utility vehicle speed along the beach and deliberately aim for a flock of birds skittering along the sand, I screeched like an angry crow and ran to block its path.

I got soaked in the downpour, standing and staring furiously at the truck as it swerved and retreated. But I knew I had a snug yurt in which to warm my body (and cool my temper) that night.