We spent the weekend up near Priest Lake. The “crown jewel” of North Idaho. And I would say that title is fairly appropriate.
We left Sandpoint in the late afternoon and drove the hour towards the lake area. We stopped off in the small town on the southern tip of the lake and just got our bearings. I got a bit of ice cream too. Salted caramel pretzel. Absolutely delicious.
I found a dispersed campsite in the state forest near the town and it worked out great for the night. Just on the ridge overlooking the river running south from the lake. No lake views but that was alright. It’s free so you can’t expect too much.
Saturday was a big day for us. We decided to rent kayaks from one of the resorts for the day. I hadn’t been in a kayak for a long time. So I was a little nervous. But we spent a little time figuring it out. It wasn’t difficult. Especially on a calm lake.
We were probably out there for seven hours or so. We kayaked to three separate islands and we made stops at a variety of different beaches. There were a few campsites on two of the islands that we paid a visit to. Looked like a pretty good setup if you ask me. Hang out there for a few days and you have the boat or a jetski to cruise around on.
By the end of the trip, Amanda was getting pretty tired and was eager to get back to the resort. We started paddling back to the marina. When we got close I found that I had made a mistake. Our resort was further down the shoreline. We still had more than a mile to go around the bend in the distance.
Amanda was not happy but after that, she paddled like an Olympian. Within no time she put at least a quarter of a mile between us. And I wasn’t even going slow. I was going at a pretty solid pace. I was impressed.
We got in around 5 o’clock and we hung out at the resort for a bit. We had a few drinks there overlooking the lake. It was well deserved.
The next day we took the drive to the northern point of the lake and just chilled out at the beach there all day. We were pretty exhausted from the adventure the day before and just needed to lay low.
The views from the beach were phenomenal. There had been a few forest fires in the area and the visibility over the weekend wasn’t great. But the views from here were really awesome. We made some dinner and ate on the beach and then went back to the dispersed campsite that we stayed at the first night.