best place to live/visit in USA??

I would like to buy a lakeside house in the USA to use for wakeboarding vacations and maybe later to spend a few months a year.

I have been to the USA quite a few times and love it. I know America is a big place and I have only seen a tiny part. I am hoping that the WW' ers might be able to send me in the right direction to look. Town names would help me search listings.

So my questions are

1. Where would you want to have a lake house and why? weather?people? atmosphere? state taxes etc?

2. Are lake house fairly easy to rent out? if so how much rent could I expect to get?

I suppose I would have a budget of $500,000 dollars. This I know will prohibit me from looking in certain places.