Okanagan Glamping in a Yurt

If you haven’t seen the news on my Instagram, let me tell you here and now…I’m expecting my second child! We are thrilled and excited to welcome our next issue April 2021!

So right now, mom and dad are taking as much downtime as we can get which recently included an Okanagan glamping trip to the woods. We weren’t exactly roughing it with a luxurious bed in a yurt but I’ll get to that shortly. You can also watch the video above for a full tour of our yurt, the onsite bathrooms and shots of the smoke – from the California and Washington state fires – that settled within our valley overnight, staying for nearly a week.

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We first came across Chute Lake Lodge in 2019 during our annual summer trip to Naramata wine bench. I had heard about it from a Facebook Group called Okanagan Burger Tour, a group that meets up at locally owned restaurants to celebrate all things burger. Chute Lake Lodge had been a stop and after seeing the photos I decided we should make our own trip into the iconic Okanagan mountains. On that first trip up we had decided to stay the following summer and so we did.

Cut to 2020. Everyone seems to want an Okanagan glamping experience for themselves. All of Canada’s campsites were occupied. People were clamouring to go do something after the shutdown so we all seemed to flock to the outdoors.

Eleven kilometres into the woods from the Naramata village we arrived at Chute Lake Lodge in the evening equipped with too much food (never let a pregnant lady pack!) and plenty of liquids. We had plans of fishing, hiking and general relaxation within the woods. But with the convenience of an onsite restaurant serving up burgers, jalapeño poppers and ice cream sundaes, this pregnant lady decided to succumb to her cravings on the first evening. We were tired from work and packing. Your typical city dwellers, we didn’t even have the necessary camp coffee pot, campfire grill and large enough cooler so shopping was required. So we did a bit of shopping before departure as well. I think I am trying to justify to you why we opted for a restaurant dinner but this is a post about glamping after all. So maybe I don’t need to feel so guilty?

That evening we did start a campfire and enjoyed the stars and Milky Way as well as the necessary s’mores. This pregnant lady with early onset sciatica slept very well underneath the fluffy white linens as a fire roared in the wood stove. There’s nothing like falling asleep to flickering fire upon a five star bed.

The following morning my husband, hailing from farm roots, got to it bright and early with a healthy camp fire and breakfast. We fuelled up with camp croissant bacon sandwiches before we tried our luck at fishing on Chute Lake. The sun was bright and warm with a slight chill to the early September air. Autumn reminding us of its proximity.

Check out these excellent campfire recipes:

Hot Ham & Swiss Croissants (I added eggs for breaky)
BBQ Breakfast Scrambler
Camping Pizza
Dutch Oven Dutch Baby with Berries

So we set out with fishing rods (provided by Chute Lake Lodge at an affordable $12 per person) and our juicy worms as bait hoping to catch a few lake trout for dinner. We were assured the fishing rods we were given were lucky having provided its previous fishermen with successful fishing journeys. Well, we must have been cursed.

Unfortunately, the trout were sly that day, skilled and nimble in robbing our bait from our fishing hooks. But the hours on the water were enjoyable despite the moments of frustration as we watched fish jump all around our boat…taunting us.

Chute Lake Lodge with outdoor restaurant seating

That evening we roasted hot dogs and made another batch of s’mores over the fire. Sipping tea, or beer in my husband’s case, as we noticed a definite haze clouding the starry sky that we so enjoyed the previous night.

The end of our Okanagan glamping experience was perforated with a solemn wall of dank smog.

That morning we woke up to an incredibly thick smoke that covered our entire valley. Little did we know it would linger for a week and created horrendous breathing conditions that extended all the way to Vancouver. The Okanagan is no stranger to smoke, but usually it is due to fires in our own province. We lucked out this year with relatively little damage due to forest fires. My heart and condolences go out to those who lost anything because of the fires in California, Oregon and Washington.