Idaho Trip Report (CDA area mostly) LONG
My family and I took 9 days and did a whirlwind tour of Idaho to check it out and see if we'd like to move there. Just a quick, preliminary trip. We're seriously considering GTFO of here in the spring/early summer of '17.
Our destination was the Coeur d'Alene (CDA) area in the northern panhandle area of the State. This was the area that most of the folks that we know that know the State suggested we see and what my research indicated would be a good choice for us. We took a route that took us up the eastern edge of ID up to CDA, stayed there for 5 days, then down the western side of the State and back to CO.
So we headed up through Wyoming to the Jackson area and then west into Idaho. Going past the Palisades Reservoir (Snake River) was cool. That lake was absolutely HUGE and the mountains there were nice. Elk hunting juices were flowing through me. We continued through there and eventually ended up in Idaho Falls for the night.
My impression of Idaho Falls was "not for us". It was nothing but prairie/ranch land on either side of the city for miles and miles...and miles. Cool if you're a rancher or do biz with truckers, but not so much if you're a casino manager looking for work. We basically crashed, woke up and left. I don't want to disparage the place, but it just didn't seem like the place for us. We blasted on down the highway.
From Idaho Falls we decided to take the longer, County highway route instead of the interstate and go through Arco, Challis and Salmon before cutting through Montana. There are a few small towns between these three "big" towns but none have more than a few hundred residents. Pretty darn remote area. This area really reminded me of parts of the western slope of Colorado and eastern Utah, but more remote. Dry, canyons, ranches. Interesting note: almost every single little town that we drove through, no matter how small, had a guns/ammo store. This made me smile.
Salmon was the biggest town (3,300 residents) on the eastern side of the State that we saw: we didn't go through Pocotello, Blackfoot or Rexburg. I really like the terrain around Salmon, and the river is enticing, but as far as job opportunities, it seemed like you needed to be in the ranching, hunting or fishing guide biz.
After a Whopper and fries (funny side story here...lol), we continued on HWY 93 through North Fork and into Montana. We went through Missoula and headed west toward CDA.
Once you get into the hills west of Missoula the terrain looks strangely familiar. There are many areas that you would swear you were on I-70 between Idaho Springs and Vail. Gorgeous mountains.
What cracked me up were the signs like, "<whatever> Pass - Continental Divide: 4200 feet elevation" and stuff like that. My house is at more than double that elevation, but it's not a pissing contest, just funny to see. But the inclines were no joke. 7% and 8% grades in places.
Going down into CDA was really cool. Unfortunately, we were in a torrential downpour at the time, but the terrain here was sweet. Dark, dark timber. My elk hunting mind was in overdrive and drooling again.
So we finally got to CDA. We stayed at the Coeur d'Alene Casino Resort Hotel which is actually about a 20 minute drive from the City of CDA on the Indian Reservation. Since I'm in the casino industry, I thought it would be wise to stay there and check out their operation since they were the big dogs in the area. There are many closer and cheaper places to stay in CDA, but this place was very nice.
The City of CDA is gorgeous. It's set on the edge of Lake Coeur d'Alene, which is HUGE. 25 miles long and 1 to 3 miles wide. 200+ feet deep at it's deepest.
The first thing I noticed when driving into the city was "All Day Parking: $3". This was "downtown" in the tourist area. Sweet.
The downtown/tourist section of town was very nice. Lots of the usual artsy fartsy stuff, ice cream shops, restaurants, art galleries, and all that like most tourist traps. There is the 2nd largest all-Irish imports shop in the USA there though. Being of Irish decent, I loved this place. It's called All Things Irish. The staff here was very cool.
So I was trying to look at this city as a place to potentially move near to - not in. I do not want to live in ANY city. Or town for that matter. If I can't see the neighbors, we're potentially looking at property that I'd consider buying. Within an hour of a good town is my criteria.
Things I liked about the city or town of CDA:
- easy to get around
- little traffic, even on the weekend
- any amenities you need are there
- 30 mins away from Spokane, WA
- nearby airport
- very clean
- people seemed pretty laid back
- a beach!
On Saturday late morning we were driving toward CDA to go to the beach. I said to my wife, "This will be the traffic test". I figured it would be shitty traffic, but we drove right into the City parking lot and parked about 100 feet from where we set our shit down on the sand at 11:00AM. The beach was nice: it's not a white sand beach like Tahiti. Coarse sand, kinda pebbly. But easy to walk on. The water was fairly cool but not freezing like I thought it would be. We stayed until about 3:00PM and it was not crowded at all. There were plenty of people there, but ample space.
We took a ferry around the lake that highlighted the cool stuff, including John Elway's gigantic party house. There's a resort on the lake that has a golf course with the world's only "floating green", where the green actually floats on the water and they move it from time to time to make it interesting. A little boat ferry's golfers out to put. I'm not a golfer, but I thought that was pretty cool.
Over the five days we spent there, we journeyed all around the immediate area. Keep in mind that CDA has less than 60K residents. I think the sign said 55k and change. Anyway, the place isn't huge, but there are supporting towns around it. There's a Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, etc., and every fast food outlet you are familiar with.
The lake is magnificent. All kinds of fish in there. 3 kinds of salmon (IIRC), trout, bass, walleye, etc. There are mountains nearby to hunt and rivers and streams all over to fish. They said that there are 2,000 lakes in ID. A forum member told me "hunting and fishing is a hobby in Colorado...it's way of life in Idaho". I like.
I'm rambling now, but there were little things that caught my eye. Like there was a "Firearms" section in the local newspaper. I haven't seen that in a while. On the front page of the local paper one day was a story about a guy who got fined because he built a 650sf treehouse, and the building code requires a permit if it's over 600sf. Wow, big news day, but this is a good thing. Bad shit does happen in the area of course, but I thought to myself "This is the biggest news to report today? Awesome!"
I never saw one "No Firearms Allowed" signs or stickers anywhere, but I don't look for them either. (I carried everywhere we went, except the beach).
Oh yeah, there is a big "splash park" in the city for the kiddos. No pools, but a ton of water features to get the kids wet and splashing around, plus a ton of other non-water playground type things around: swings, slides, rope climbing things, gongs to beat on, etc. It was free but not supervised at all. <gasp>
I saw zero Bernie Sanders bumper stickers, but more than one "Does this Ass (BHO) make my truck look big?" stickers. LOL
I took a solo excursion to the town of St. Maires which is on the southern end of Lake Coeur d'Alene. It's a small town about an hour from CDA that is set in the trees and seems pretty quiet. I think we'll be looking into this area more.
Sandpoint is north of CDA and I would have liked to check that area out as well, but it never happened. I hear it's similar to CDA, just smaller.
When we left the CDA area we headed south and went through Moscow, which is a smallish college town that was very well manicured and had lots of VW vans running around. We gassed up and continued south to meet up with Bailey Guns in Lewiston.
In Lewiston, we had a quick lunch and bullshitted with BG for a while. I never met BG before, so it's always good to meet face to face. He gave us the low-down on the area and we headed out. Thanks for meeting us bro!
South of Lewiston, you eventually hit the McCall and Cascade area which were totally gorgeous. These were pretty small communities, but man, they were beautiful. High country, big lakes, mountains...drooool. I haven't looked into real estate in these areas, but my guess it's $$$.
From there we blasted through Interstates to Boise and to Twin Falls to crash for the night. We had no interest in checking those cities out at all. We then cruised home to CO after that.
Anyway, hope that wasn't too boring. Any questions, let me know.
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Originally Posted by roberth
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