Best Tent Camping near Payette National Forest

This is a pretty quiet place! It about an hour drive/17 miles from Cascade on a paved road. True to it's name, the lake and campsite are right on a summit! The lake is pretty small and a little muddy, but a fun dip nevertheless. It's about a 5 minute hike from the campsites. There are 3 campsites at the campground and they are all first come first serve! Dispersed camping is allowed in the area as well. Managed to find 2 empty spots here on Labor Day weekend, which was a real treat! The sites all have fire rings and picnic tables and share a vault toilet. The sites are well spaced and there little noise carries around the area. The campground is a little close the to highway (Warm Lake Rd) but traffic at night is pretty low, so the noise isn't bad. There is a wilderness airstrip not too far off, so some plane noise as well! Otherwise, a nice spot with some great views of the night sky.

We have high expectations since we’ve been at so many places, so please bear that in mind when reading this.

1. Only vault toilets and water spigots placed randomly around.
2. No electric/water hook ups, flushing toilets, or showers
3. Outside of one vault toilet building some animal made a nest above out of dirt where they continually poop out of that looks like it hasn’t been touched in months so when you go to use the restroom you walk by a giant pile of poop.
4. Pea gravel pads where they encourage you put your tent, not bad if you have a blow up mattress. It is nicely raked upon arrival.
5. Campsite was clean.
6. Most sites had trees, but not all so definitely check site pictures online if you need shade.
7. Most sites have a view of the lake, since it’s almost like a peninsula campground.
8. Nice boat ramps and lots of parking for boaters to leave trucks and trailers.
9. Bugs would get a bit crazy at random times of day depending on weather.
10. 20 minutes south of McCall if you wanted to get out and see a quaint little town.
11. Cows on opposite side of water from campground; you can hear them, but not smell them.

The fir trees stand tall and still. I can’t figure out if they are waiting for something to happen or if they simply don’t care.

If you’re looking for sone sort of gorgeous panorama, this might not be the place for you. It’s really just a small meadow in the mountains that the BLM put a vault toilet and a couple of fire rings in. That being said, this place is beautiful.

You can’t see rapid creek from the campground but you can hear it. And that’s really just as good. The white noise from the creek matched with the occasional bird or other nature sound is one of the most relaxing things on the planet.

It’s high enough in elevation that this place gets nippy at night. I stayed in early August and the temps dropped into the upper 30s at night.

The campground is well maintained and the vault toilet was reasonably clean when I arrived. It became Kevin clean shortly after I set up camp.

There are trails from both sites near the vault toilet that lead down to Rapid Creek.

I never saw any bear scat but signs on the property warn of them so be smart with your food.

All in all, Rapid Creek dispersed camping is excellent if you just want a quiet place where no one is around. It’s amazing but not for the reasons people usually like in my opinion. ◦

Camping is free, limit of 10 days. Not really any designated sites and surrounded by private land with aggressive signage. Not all roads around the reservoir are public, so be prepared to turn around and back up at dead ends. We came to an orange gate that said "private property", and stopped. While trying to turn around, we noticed a white truck sitting behind us. When we turned around and passed him, he motioned to roll down the window, and then berated us and called us idiots, even though we had not even entered the private land, nor did we want to. We felt threatened. In the end we chose a site on the upper road of the reservoir. The view was nice but not close to the pit toilet. No fire ring. No table. A no frills place. Like many lakes in Idaho, the reservoir is mostly dry. Not a huge deal but not the prettiest to look at. There is only one single pit toilet for the whole reservoir and someone was set up right next to it like it was their own. People ride off-road vehicles here. In an area with slim pickings for free camping, I guess you have to take what you can get.

This campsite is located east of Cascade Lake and Donnelly, Idaho. It's a scenic road to get there. The camsite we were in was dry camping with no hook-ups. The camping pad for our 27' Travel Trailer was nice and level. Each campsite had a picnic table and a firepit. There are some nice hiking trails in the vicinity. Mountain biking and horse riding is acceptable there as well. Since we had kayaks, we had a short drive to the boat ramp. There is excellent trout fishing. There is a small swim beach near the Warm Lake Lodge and Restaurant, near where the cabins are. All in all, a great stay, away from the city :-) It's a nice peaceful setting.