Moran State Park on Orcas Island isn’t the first park to embrace “glamping,” but the idea still raises an eyebrow or two. Glamping, translated, means leaving the sleeping bags, tents and other gear home and camping in a glamorous way.
Washington State Parks bills its version as “a night of luxury in a classic canvas-wall tent featuring tasteful furnishings, a cushy queen-size bed and comfortable mattress fitted with luxury linens.”
When I was last in a tent with canvas walls, I was a Girl Scout sleeping on a cot.
A “cushy queen-size bed” is a recipe for sleeping in while nature waits. In a tent, there’s much more motivation to get up early (get off the ground) and enjoy a full day outdoors.
At Moran, glamping comes with a cedar deck platform, towels (you do have to walk to the restroom), soaps, tables and chairs, dresser, coat rack, mirror, lanterns and flashlights.
I get it, I get it. Boomers are getting along in years, creaky bones don’t do well on the ground, and the closest we’re going to get to a sleeping bag is buying one for a grandchild.
Others don’t mind spending $119 to $219 per night for a two- to four person canvas tent.
OK, I’m grumpy about this and I’m not perfectly clear why.
Perhaps because tent camping (when you actually have to pitch a tent) can be a great leveler of society’s economic differences. The camper in the next site could be a Boeing executive introducing camping to her children or a college student on a budget.
Yes, there is a financial/technological hierarchy in tents and hiking shoes but it’s not glaringly obvious to most people and no, I’m not oblivious to RV’ers and tenters sharing a campground.
Perhaps I’m grumpy because of why glamping-style tents are in the parks in the first place.
A few years ago the Legislature decided to eliminate most of the general fund support for parks and replace it with a user fee-based system. The state had already created the Discover Pass but it brought in only about half of the money predicted.
The state parks department now has the Transformation Strategy to transform itself into “a more diversified funding model.”
One of its strategies is to “expand use of land holdings for compatible revenue-generating purposes,” and to develop amenities that advance transformation.
I’m still a fan of the common good, the philosophy that was the underlying tenant of creating national parks. We all have the opportunity, even if we don’t use it. It’s an investment in the future.
I understand the flip side, the idea that users should pay for it all, even though the math doesn’t work for 100 percent funding of costs, and it’s unlikely to do so without pricing a segment of the population out of the parks.
Perhaps we can start advertising in the parks: Moran Google Park, backs of benches (Furniture World), camping sites (Sleep Country USA) and picnic shelters (Whole Foods).
Don’t laugh. That concept is already being discussed at various levels of state and national park systems.
But back to glamping. For a reservation, call 888-226-7688.
For something free, visit a state park on June 6, National Trails Day, and June 13, National Get Outdoors Day. Visitors do not need a Discover Pass to park those days. Or visit Department of Fish and Wildlife or Department of Natural Resources sites.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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