Stand at Osprey Point on the Ponderosa State Park peninsula and the pines run all the way down to Payette Lake, with the motorhome parked somewhere in the timber behind you. It's a lake to settle into for the whole week, and nobody asks you to move the rig. Mornings go to the sand at North Beach while it's still quiet, afternoons to the lake. McCall is close by for groceries, a dinner out, or a slow lap of town when the kids want a break from the beach.
The motorhome earns its keep after dark, when the mountain air cools off and dinner moves inside. The kids climb into the cabover, and the fridge stays cold on the site's power with no ice runs to town.
The road up is ID-55, north out of Nampa into the mountains, and it passes a second lake at Cascade on the way to McCall. If the Payette sites are gone for your dates, that's the lake to try next, and the two sit close enough on the same highway to split a week between them.
Ponderosa State Park on Payette Lake
The campgrounds here are built around rigs, and Idaho State Parks lists 163 serviced campsites and a dump station at Ponderosa, as of September 2026. Summer dates are popular, so reserve the site first and choose the motorhome to fit it.
A travel trailer works here too, without anyone in the family learning to tow. Some Nampa-area owners deliver the trailer to your reserved site and set it up, but that's offered listing by listing, so confirm the listing includes it and that the trailer fits the pad you booked.
If the rig comes to you late in the day, sleep in Nampa and drive north in the morning. Mason Creek RV Park has water, sewer and 30/50 amp hookups, pull-thrus and a dump station, which makes it an easy place to fill the tank, stock the fridge and learn the awning before the mountains.
A spare day at that end of the trip is worth spending south of town in the Snake River canyon, at Swan Falls and the Birds of Prey area, where raptors hunt along the basalt walls above the river and you're back in Nampa to sleep. For two people in a smaller rig, the Nampa campervan page covers the rest of that river country, Bruneau Dunes and Celebration Park.
Lake Cascade State Park, the second lake on ID-55
Lake Cascade trades Payette's pines for sagebrush down to the shoreline, with boat ramps and campground loops strung along the west side. It works as a base of its own. Park the rig at Cascade for the week, spend the days on the water off the ramps, and make McCall a day drive up the road.
The park is big, with 279 campsites across 10 developed campgrounds as of September 2026, and Ridgeview is the loop with power, water and sewer at the site. All but two of those campgrounds require a reservation, so book the pad before the motorhome here too.
The rest of Idaho's RV trips, from the panhandle lakes to Island Park, are on the Idaho RV page.