Choices abound when it comes to high-end guest ranches but few provide the authentic experience of the Diamond D. Perched just inside Idaho's little known wilderness--astonishing in itself for being the largest contiguous wilderness in the lower 48 at 2.3m acres--the Diamond D is a three generation owned and operated guest ranch that functions as a real farm, ranch and hunting base. The Demorest family clawed this place out of the wilderness. It sits at the confluence of three valleys and each place on the ranch seems to open up a different vista. It's almost confounding because you look up one valley and there's glacier cut canyons; another valley, peaks so high they seemed to have been spared; and down a third valley so large and expansive that you can't turn your back on it.
The Diamond D makes no excuses: this is a working ranch. You share a dining room with the staff. The rooms are comfortable but not embellished. At night you can learn to line dance with a high energy, youthful staff, or shoot guns. They will lead you to hot springs, take you straight up the side of a mountain on a horse, or drop you at a high mountain lake above treeline. You will come back from all of this hungry, and they'll solve that too.
This ranch is undiscovered in part because it's not on the Middlefork river, so you can't float to it. You have only two options, drive or fly. Take the latter. It's not that expensive and it's an experience. If you do drive, you'll go through boom towns that are historically fascinating. Yelp limits length here, but don't miss the chapel, hand-built by the family matriarch. And get to know any of the family: the ranch is run by Tom and Linda's two daughters, plus a decorated fighter pilot son-in-law that commutes via bush plane and is just finishing a million dollar hydro plant on the ranch that blew my engineering mind. read more