Cruising in Idaho

Deep, cold, glacially clear lakes are Idaho's calling card. In the north, Coeur d'Alene, Pend Oreille, and Priest Lake spread out beneath evergreen ridgelines and Rocky Mountain peaks: big water with room for sailing, powerboating, and a full summer of watersports. Marinas in towns like Coeur d'Alene and Sandpoint serve everything from runabouts to serious cruisers with slips, fuel, and repair services. What keeps people coming back is the combination: water this clean, scenery this steep, and enough lake to lose the crowd.

South of the panhandle the geography shifts, but the boating holds up. Central Idaho's lakes (Payette Lake at McCall, Cascade Lake), sit in the West Central Mountains and run on a smaller, friendlier scale: family boating, fishing, slow cruises past timbered shoreline. The marinas are more intimate here, the pace more neighborly, and the payoff is access, remote inlets and sandy beaches close enough for a day trip, good enough for a week.