Heath Henderson:
Hi All,
Great to see a NW site here. We are new Crownies and first time boaters with a 2003 202BR. Sounds like Detroit, Billy Chinook, Shasta and Prinveille are popular spots. We live in Vancouver, WA, just across the Columbia from Portland. We've been in the Columbia River, Lake Merwin, LaCamas Lake (very small), and a couple side channels of the Columbia (Lake River).
Any other good locations in the NW area we should check out?
Heath
Hello, Heath.
We live in Vancouver, WA too!
We have an awesome 202BR and we are totally picky about where we boat as coming from Canada we had a pile of gem (lakes) to choose from. My preferences (out here) having seen (& boated on some) the following - Detroit, Billy Chinook, Shasta, Merwin, Swift, Yale, Mayfield, the Columbia & Willamette rivers...is still Lake Chelan (fairly far to go) or Riffe Lake - closer to our part of WA state. I went on a quest to find lakes that suited me or reminded me of home. ie Had no stumps, had natural lake feel & nice scenery, those that were less jammed for boating. We took the boat to several different spots. We are finding with the population density the best times to go boating is during the week as we have made the "mistake" of coming out to lakes by 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning only to be told the boat launch (Merwin) and facilities are already full - go somewhere else such as swift or Yale. We decided at that point to take it all the way to Chelan one week. It was great. I would attend a CL get together rally at Chelan. A Huge pristine natural lake and quite a challenge when the weather gets nasty. We totally did not enjoy Mayfield as it was packed and since it's so small you really can't open her up. We also hit something in shallow water at Mayfield and had to repair the skeg and prop. After that we went to Riffe and that was pretty nice - larger and a straight shot to drive to - no curvery roads.
Please feel free to contact me through the forum and we can possibly get together. We are family orientated type of boater and no longer do the WOT stuff that I (prior to family) intended when I bought our boat back in 1998. We enjoy tubing, skiing, and crusing and like to camp alhtough we only have one tow vehicle a boat "and" a camper. (In other words we usually try for 2 day - short boating trips - and leave camper at home...Or we take out the camper for a week but leave the boat). That said our boat is ouftitted with overnight ability and worst case we could always bring a tent.
CA$HFLOW