Sandpoint is nice - a beautiful place on account of all you mentioned and more, except there are too many libs there (my former stepfather, his “wife”, two sons from his earliest marriage...)even for an expatriate Portlander like me, who only escaped the people’s socialist republic of Porn-land...
I’m a couple of hours S of you, at the confluence of the Snake and the Clearwater rivers, in the Lewiston-Clarkston valley. The scenery is not quite a match with my ideals, but I’ll take the “trade-off” of lots of nice conservative neighbors, a major bullet manufactory within 2 miles of my back door, over half the nation’s soft white winter wheat and lentils produced within a 100 mile radius, and heavily wooded areas that are less than an hour’s drive away...Not to mention Chinook, Steelhead, and Sturgeon fishing half a mile away...
Freegards!
Another vote for Sandpoint - I’m 10 miles south of there. New York is OK, San Francisco I love despite the people who live there, Tokyo is awesome, Seattle is exquisite, but they just don’t have that big-city sophistication you get in Sandpoint.
There are more libtards than I like to see in Sandpoint but they are still a minority. Most of them work for the school district. There are a surprising number of transient libs - they come here for “paradise” and then find that there are no jobs for those with college degrees in rice pudding, the Artiste market is saturated, and the welfare benefits aren’t very lucrative like in Cali, Oregoon, or Warshington. The most common complaint I hear from them as I’m buying stuff at their moving sale is “There’s just way too many rednecks around here.” Uh-huh.
Lots of retired cops and military around this area and they are most DEFINITELY the conservative type.
That being said, retirement is coming in about 5 years and I’m trying to sell my wife on the Lewiston area for the reasons you mentioned. I like to prospect for gold and there’s more of that in your area than in far N. Idaho. I’ve promised her that we will not live downwind of the Potlatch plant LOL!