Oh give me a home where it's nice and quiet and tree-ish for a week or two.

July 2, 2011 4:11 PM

I'm looking for a cheap-as-basic-as-dirt cabin, yurt, tipi, et cetera in the Pacific Northwest to hang out in for a week or two on a writing retreat.

I've done a little digging both in general google terms and mefi and haven't come up with quite what I'm looking for. Would love to keep this under a couple hundred dollars. If it's a cabin, it'd be great if it has some kind of bathroom, running water, stove, et cetera, but none of that is dealbreakers. Mostly I just want to be somewhere super-forested.

I'm in Portland so pretty much anywhere in Oregon or Washington is fair game. Time of trip would ideally be 2nd full week of (this) July, though if it had to be postponed for up to a month that's probably okay.

Also, I'm going to be on my own and I'm honestly not sure whether it'd be better (in terms of safety) for me to be at a campsite that's relatively close to or far away from others in the area; if anyone has advice on that, I'd love to hear it.

posted by curious nu to travel & transportation (6 answers total)

You're probably not going to find anything this late in the game. The NFS/State of Oregon cabins and yurts fill up months in advance, so anything at this point would be private or by the owner. My best suggestion, and I don't know what's out there or how much it would run, would be to try craigslist, homeaway.com or someplace like that for places in Zig Zag/Welches, Sunriver or the coast range.
posted by fiercekitten at 5:14 PM on July 2, 2011

Also, you might be able to find something along the McKenzie or Umpqua rivers, but most of the places I remember down there are near the highway.
posted by fiercekitten at 5:16 PM on July 2, 2011

Oh man! I've always wanted to try renting a Fire Lookout. Before they had satellites watching for forest fires, they had isolated outposts on stilts for rangers to keep an eye out for fires. They're largely for rental now and can be found in various stages of repair from "rustic" to quite nice.

I imagine spending a week high above the tree canopy far from civilization would be a nice place to write.
posted by JimmyJames at 6:37 PM on July 2, 2011 [4 favorites]

Maybe these folks could help out? http://writersrefuge.com/
posted by The otter lady at 6:40 PM on July 2, 2011

Curiousnu...mefi mail me. My GD lives in a yurt in fairhaven, Bellingham, we're away from the 10th to 24th getting married. We might be able to work out a sublet?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:44 PM on July 3, 2011

I've had good luck with vrbo.com. Also the Forest Service has some inexpensive rentals near Olive Lake, Oregon.
posted by bluedaisy at 8:56 PM on August 10, 2011