Outlet Beach at Redfish Lake is pale sand on glacial water, the Sawtooths coming straight out of the far shore in slabs and broken ridges. The granite starts at the waterline. In summer you swim it, and it is cold, the kind of cold that makes the sand feel warm when you come out.
Idaho 21 is the road from Boise, following the South Fork Payette through forest and canyon for a long run before Redfish, until the water shows. Then the lodgepole takes over around the lake and the campground loops start. The van night is in those loops, needles underfoot, shade in the middle of the day, and you can still hear the water from the pad. The loops sit close enough to the sand that the lake is the overnight, not a day trip from town.
You walk down to Outlet in the morning with the granite already in sun, the short walk from the loop to the sand. You swim and dry off in the lodgepoles, then get back in. The whole day can happen there without a second destination, sand in the morning and the loop by afternoon. Late-summer smoke can sit on the peaks, a real risk on this road.
Glacier View and Sunny Gulch are the reservable loops that take a van, so lock the pad first. The van is the second booking, because a walk-in tent site is a different night than a loop you can drive into. Point Campground prohibits motorhomes and trailers, and the first sites there are walk-in tent pads. Campgrounds around the lake run roughly mid-May through late September, and the Idaho Transportation Department closes Idaho 21 between Grandjean and Banner Summit for avalanche risk in winter and spring, as of September 2026. If you need more sleeping space than a van, Idaho RV rentals are the next size up.
Pine Flats and Kirkham on the South Fork Payette
On the drive up Idaho 21, after a main-street pause in Idaho City, the mining town before the canyon tightens, Kirkham is a soaking pool in river cobble, granite around the rim, steam on the canyon wall where hot water meets the Payette. You sit in it with the river moving past, hot on the cobble and cold where the current shoulders in. The soak sits on the Idaho 21 run, a stop you make on the way to the lake.
Pine Flats Campground is the overnight on this river. Pads sit in the pines with vault toilets and drinking water, no hookups, and a quarter-mile trail down to a soaking pool on the bank, and you walk back to the van after you soak for a river night. Reserve a site, because this is the pad on the soaking stretch, not a walk-up to assume. The season runs from the end of May through the end of September.
Bogus Basin above Boise
Above town, Bogus Basin runs lifts in winter and bike trails in summer. You sleep in a gravel lot with the Boise Front dropping away and the city lights in a grid underneath. In the morning you are already on the hill.
Bogus Basin lets you sleep in those lots as dry camping, no hookups and no fee, as of September 2026. Campfires are prohibited, the lot rotates by season, and the vehicle has to fit a standard parking space.
Lucky Peak is the sand beach at the foot of the dam, the reservoir opening out behind it. The state park is day use. The first night near town is Macks Creek Campground, a small Corps of Engineers loop beside the lake with five nonelectric RV pads you reserve ahead. The rest of the sites are tent-only.
South of the valley the trip turns to sand and sage, and Nampa has Bruneau Dunes and the Owyhees. For the rest of the state, use the Idaho campervan hub.
