Camping Is In Tents II -- The Yurt Stands Alone

Some things about tent camping.
1.  More people are eaten out of tents by bears than are eaten out of campers.
2.  Tents are not good at keeping out the cold.
3.  The number of men that can stay comfortably in a 'three man tent' is less than three.
For these reasons we did not stay in our own tent this year.  We borrowed a tent.  A bigger tent.  A more substantial tent.  A six sided, former military, former hunting camp tent.  In fact, let's just go ahead and call it a yurt.
And in the yurt we had a dog (E-I-E-I-O), and a lantern, and a queen size air mattress, and a table and two chairs, and a cot, and a woodstove.  Oh, yes, we did.

And even though it was freezing cold outside the yurt...

it was toasty warm inside.  As long as someone kept wood in the stove.  The STP did this job admirably two of the three nights we stayed on the mountain.  But Saturday night it was my job.  And I did it admirably as well, if the standard is that the fire was still burning in the morning.  In the process, though, I managed to get lost in the tent and to use up all the kindling wood, to step on my glasses and break them in two pieces, and to crawl outside and get more kindling (without being eaten by a bear).  I had to go outside, because I had not only burned up all the kindling in an effort to keep warm, I had cannibalized the cardboard box it was in.  I know how the Donner Party must have felt.  I would have started burning the tent poles if I had to.

The good news is that this year's Christmas picture has already been taken. 

Season's Greetings from the Happy Yurt Dwellers (On the Mountain).