‘Before Summer, It’S Peaceful. Everything Kind Of Just Flows’

It’s 6 a.m., the Friday before Memorial Day. Plowboy Campground, a winding 3-mile hike north of the Beaver Creek parking lot, is littered with fallen trees. The effect suggests a giant game of “pickup sticks.”

A splash interrupts the tranquility. A fish? A duck, perhaps?

Inside the only tent at Plowboy, Zeppy sits at attention. The black Lab’s owners, Pat and Paris Kennedy, lie beside her, still asleep.

Priest Lake has two distinct seasons: summer, and the other nine months. Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day mark the boundaries.

“Before summer, it’s peaceful,” says Kirsten Newbauer, manager of the Leonard Paul Store in Coolin. “Everything kind of just flows. The lake has a different look to it.

“After Memorial Day weekend, it’s like a frenzy. Everybody comes up here, and they’re in such a hurry to have fun.”

Newbauer knows she couldn’t afford to live year-round at Priest without the summer influx of shoppers. “But we also can’t wait for them to leave in September. That sounds terrible, but that’s actually how it is.”

How about if customers just mailed money to her store?

“Yeah, that would work,” she says with a laugh. Friday, 6:13 a.m.: A bumblebee the size of a fuzzy walnut drones its way among the huckleberry branches, trying in vain to pry open young buds. Hill’s Resort manager Craig Hill recalls when he was in high school in the early ‘70s, “We would close in late September and open about the middle of May. The only reason we were open in September was the annual mushroom convention.”

Snowmobiling and cross-country skiing have increased Priest Lake’s off-season allure, he says. “But it’s still not profitable just to be open, unless there’s some special event that somebody has organized.”

Friday, 6:27 a.m.: A flock of Canada geese lifts off for its first noisy sortie of the day.

U.S. Forest Service recreation planner Debbie Wilkins explains that Priest Lake’s campgrounds don’t open until a week before Memorial Day “because use (before then) would be so ridiculously low.”

But between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day, the occupancy rate runs 90 percent, “which is pretty outrageous compared to other campgrounds around Region 1 - North Idaho and Montana.” During July and August, Wilkins says, all 141 Forest Service campsites at Priest Lake are full.

“If people are going to come visit me, I tell them, `Don’t come in June, July or August. Come in September.’

“You practically own the lake then. There’s nobody out there, and the weather’s beautiful.”

Friday, 6:40 a.m.: A distant putt-putt-putt announces a small outboard fighting its way up the runoff-swollen thoroughfare connecting the main lake with primitive Upper Priest Lake.

Memorial Day weekend and Summer 1999 at Priest Lake has officially commenced.

Life on the lake ‘It doesn’t really matter which lake is being referred to’ ‘I’d rather be at the lake any season but summer’ ‘Simultaneously the cheapest and best kind of lake place’ Infatuation with vacationing at the lake began with the wealthy early in the century Lake-lovers take water safety seriously Floating restaurants a big splash Some can’t wait to catch the waves