looking for a new vacation area

I'm from Portland, Or and vacation at lake shasta every year. looking for a new place to go. Any suggestions within a reasonable distance.

Lake Rossevelt Wa. you cant go wrong.

i'd second roosevelt.

sunbanks resort on banks lake is pretty cool too. they have little houses you can rent and have moorage, restaraunt, cantina, little store, etc.

lake entiat, pateros, lincoln rock state park (all on the columbia near wenatchee) are nice too, but water doesn't warm up usually until after the 4th of july.

how far is shasta from pdx? that's one trip, i really want to make someday

Lake Okanagan, BC, Canada.

Nowhere better than that place in the summer.

Diamond Lake, OR

I've only been snomobiling there but it looks like a nice area.

Shasta is like a 7 hr drive from Portland. Bruce, it's about 10 hrs from your house.... and well worth it. Made that trip lots of times when Boardstock was there....I'd say thats the best houseboating on the west coast.

So within a 7 hr drive from Portland.....

- Roosevelt or Shuswap have houseboats.
- Banks has the waterfront cabins & houses.
- Also in that chain is Sun Lakes, Blue lake & Soap lake, each of which is nice..... although Soap is a little funky.
- Columbia River just about anywhere in eastern WA. Can get windy but when it's nice, it's awesome.
- Billy Chinook.... haven't made it there yet, but I hear it's a little busy in the summer.
- Snake river north of TriCities, several good camp areas.
- Powell.... number one on my list to make before I die.
- Berryessa.... looks like we'll make this one this July. Hope you guys get some water!

The Shuswaps are amazing in the summer, beautiful scenery, clean water, warm weather. Not to mention the US dollar will go a long way in Canada right now.

Brett, Powell is a long way from Portland, but you've got to do it at least once!

We have friends that live near Portland that have met us in Powell, I think it takes them about 18 hours pulling their boat to Bullfrog Marina.

It's about 14 hours from SoCal to Bullfrog, but again, worth the drive for a week of houseboating in paradise.

Our other houseboating favorites are Trinity and Bullard's Bar, where our friends from Portland meet us as well. About 8 hrs. and 10 hrs. from you, and 10 and 8 from us also, so they make a good halfway meeting place for our families to get together.

Lake Chelan in Eastern Washington. The water is a little cold (Glacier fed I believe) but the lake is huge with camping, hotels, house rentals the works. I may be wrong, but it is about three hours east of Seattle. Great little throw-back town.

Take the Okanagan over Shuswap. You've got Kelowna on the water, you can walk around with only shorts and flipflops at night it's so warm, it's a massive lake, and it never gets busy.

Add to that, there are a bunch of smaller lakes in the immediate area, so you're never out of new options.

Chelan is the shizz so much to do there tons of winerys and golf, great lakes including Chelan and Entiat. You can count on the weather being between 85 and 95 all summer long. I have a house over there that we rent out weekly all summer. It sleeps 12-14 has a pool super nice place. It's not cheap but if you have enough people it's worth it. http://www.vrbo.com/92134

Nice..... We have a place on Entiat for Labor Day week. Sleeps 16, waterfront, moorage for 3 boats.

You guys are gettin me all jacked up to get out there..... and there is still a foot of ice on the lake!

Love Entiat we stay at Desert Canyon a couple times a year. Always straight butter on the lake.

hate, where's it at? room for boats? any moorage? prolly not, but is there room for boats at the property? been a while since i've been to chelan. usually too cold, crowded and windy for my taste, but september's nice.

I've never had any luck at Chelan either for the same reason as Bruce Mac. It's been damn near open seas when I've been there. The "Perfect Storm" will come out of the middle of nowhere.

yeah, i think if you can commit to a week, you can snag some decent water, but it's chilly! weekends are nuts. wouldn't be a bad place to stay though and then tow down to the columbia though. shoot me a pm hate if you don't want to post up. i'm curious about parking.

Yeah, plenty of parking for a boat I bring mine of course and if you don't wanna hit Chelan or Entiat you can cruise just 5 minutes to Roses lake which is always warm, calm and traffic free. It's on the small side but thats where we ride or surf then just party on Chelan. Your right though the roughest water I've negotiated has been on Chelan (of course I had a huge advantage being in a Sanger). Bruce you're dead on Septembers tough to beat over there we had a family do 5 weeks one year half September and half October.

Sandpoint Idaho! About 7-8 hours from Portland, huge huge huge lake and not alot of people and or boats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pend_Oreille

Payette Lake in McCall Idaho is awesome! That is where I go for my summers and there is a lot of things to do besides the lake!

Duffy Mahoney, same Duffy from Mick Duffs??? I was out there in early January, riding Schweitzer.
That lake is massive though, I'd love to get out there in the summer.

Sorry for the hi-jack...

Brett - Billy Chinook is a great lake, but a tad chilly at times. You can also look up Prineville Reservoir (over towards Bend'ish). We stayed there for a week last summer and the water was nice.

Speaking of Shasta, we are lookin at goin there this august. good or bad idea with the water levels being so low? (end hijack and sorry)

Watch the weather report for the next few months for Shasta. They were getting a ton of rain last night, which is much needed!

We were there in late August of 2007 when water levels were already about 125' under the treeline (which is not unusual). We had a situation where my brother hit a submerged tree top on a SkySki...... the branches were about a foot underwater. Late summer of 2008 that same tree was over 75' tall. I guess that was close to the lowest the lake has ever been.

Looks like their about 140' from full pool right now so things are definitely looking better.

Pend O'reille is windy as hell an awful lot of the time. We live 30 minutes from there & can find a dozen places that are way better..... including the Pend O'reille river just west of the dam...... some of the glassiest water I've ever seen on an August Saturday afternoon on the river.

(Message edited by bill_airjunky on February 17, 2009)

you mean like this bill?!

buddy's place pend oreille river last july

Hehe, that looks like the PdO on a busy Saturday alright!!

I can't tell you how bad I want a piece of property there. It's actually pretty reasonable too. Kinda like driving back about 100 years though. Beautiful area any time of year. Unfortunately this time of year it would be probably an hour or more drive to get to work.

yeah, our friends bought a nice cabin there. needed a little bit of work, but it's only like 45 minutes from their house in spokane. it's a bit of a dirty/gnarley drive down to it, but it's beautiful. i'm a little hesitant to bring my boat down there. we hit a sandbar in his last year, nothing major, just cleaned up the prop a bit.

pretty sure we're going back this july.

The places mentioned in WA are great, but Shasta is hard to beat.

What are you looking for? Primarily Riding?
Will you be bringing your own party? Or, are you looking for a place where you would be able to hook up with others to party?

OK Bruce Mac, I gotta ask if no one else will. What's up with that dock? Do you have to swim out to it? Or is there some kind of drawbridge that folds down to it.
Beautiful place by the way!

the dock was only 2 days old. he had a little aluminum skiff we used to pull ourselves in and out with, but he was planning on installing a gangway out to it. he was still researching his options at that point. cool place and looking forward to going back.

Holy smokes; nice to know there are alot of helpful people out there. Sorry I was way to general with my question. Looking for a place that is warm like Shasta. Will bring my RV just plan to wakeboard/surf and ski with the family. It would be nice to have a lounge and music like Lakeshore Inn for the wife. I would really like to get to Powell but, what a drive. How does Shasta and Powell compare?
Been to all the places mention except the following:
Bullard's Bar need to check out
Lake Okanagan, To cold? best time to go?
Shuswap To cold? best time to go?
Berryessa? interesting?
Payette Lake love to sled and ski but how warm in the summer?

You can always find nice spots on pend oreille , you just have to hunt when the wind picks up, hit me up and I can help you with some local spots. And yes I am Duffy of MickDuff's Brewery, small world.

if you are considering Bullards and Berryessa, might as well check out Oroville and The Delta

Why would anyone say Okanagan or Shuswap... the Okanagan Valley has got to be one of the worst areas... blood sucking leaches... so much crime that you will have to sleep in your boat... all I can say is STAY AWAY...

For those that are from this area... they know what I am talking about!

Oh come on, our lakes are big enough that they're super quiet even on the busiest days... We don't need to make things up to scare others away.

I've got a place on the water on the Okanagan. It's super hot from July through August. That would be the best time to go. The air stays in the high 80s to low 90s most of that time, although it'll push over 100 for parts. The water, depending on where you are on the lake, will be somewhere in the low to mid 70s.

It can get a little rough on that lake, especially if you don't know what coves are calm. But there are tons of smaller, but still big, lakes all around it. Glass is never more than 30min away.

The only bad thing about that place is that summer is so short.

(Message edited by taft on February 18, 2009)

bruce how is the pond oreille river ive thought about there a few times i live in gig harbor wa we rent a house on hayden lake in idaho every year in august for a couple of weeks its real nice in the am n pm not busy ,been to banks lake and roosevelt they are both very nice like banks more but not into camping anymore.

(Message edited by dav51lin on February 18, 2009)

pond oreille river is nice. there's some sandbars though and the level fluctuates quite a bit because of a nearby dam. that's why his dock is so far out in that picture. the river is supposedly navigatable for a quite some distance, but i only saw a very small portion of it.

did you check out sunbanksresort.com by any chance? it's on banks lake and it's awesome imo. they built some "villas" about 4 years ago and they're pretty nice. 3,4 and 5 bedroom houses basically with huge decks, full kitchens, fully furnished, etc. they have moorage, a small convenience store, kitchen/restaraunt, cantina (full bar). it's really fun. we go there with 4 other families and stay over the 4th. it's a blast. might want to check it out. it gets a little crazy because they still have all the campers and rv'ers, but if you're staying at the villas, you're away from all that and it's not anything like camping.

the lakes big enough you can find good water too, although the resort is pretty close to the feed from the columbia, so you have to travel south to find the warmer water (down near steamboat). check 'em out.

Come up to Nicola Lake, BC Canada. Still in the interior of BC. Okanagan and Shuswap are great. There is also Osoyoos which is right on the Canadian/US boarder. Oroville is the US side in Washington. I'm on Nicola Lake which is just outside of Merritt BC north of Osoyoos. The picture on the bottom is over looking our summer house towards the lake. The Nicola region is a semi desert dry area so it can get over 100 degrees in the summer and generally always has nice dry weather. There is a camp ground just down from us. The best part is that the lake is super quiet as not many people come here so you have ripper hot days on butter water. You'd be about 8 hrs away. 6 hrs to the boarder and 2hrs from the boarder in Sumas Washington up to Merritt.

bruce yes banks is great we stayed at a motel a few times in electric city was clean and cheap right next to a boat launch north end of the lake very close to steamboat around labor day for a week been wanting to go again might stop by after my stay at hayden lake,already reserved for 1st 2 weeks in aug, been saying that for a few yrs though.

(Message edited by dav51lin on February 18, 2009)

Dave, I have looked at renting a cabin on Nicola, but thought it might get blown out. Are the conditions generally calm? what is the water temp in July/August and how clean.Your cabin looks amazing by the way, looks the Pine Beetle has already been to visit, the place we rent at the Shuswap had all it's pine killed.

^ RJ. Apparently Nicola is known to get pretty rough at times yet everytime I had been up there last year the lake looked like the pictures above. I only have 1 season of water conditions under my belt as our house is just being finished now but so far I would say it's a lot calmer most of the time then people think....but don't tell anyone.lol. Last July long it was 41 degrees and three boats out on the 20km long lake and pure butter. Water temp is a bit cooler but when it's real hot out it feels great. The lake does get some algae bloom which makes the water a pea green color but it doesn't stain the side of the boat or anything, not really an issue otherwise a very clean lake. Ya pine beetle is a bit of a problem. Already had to clear quite a few of the dead trees.

That pine beetle is kicking the sh** out of the trees up there. At the start of every summer, you can see the progress it made over the previous winter. I can only imagine how it'll be when I head up to the Okanagan next. The Coquihalla is going red because of it.