Lake in the Forest is a very attractive RV park with both RV parking and a bunch of cabins. The…read morecabins are rustic and comfortable in a really pretty way. They resemble the Tiny House trend you read so much about in Miami; they are tiny and they are houses, and they are super-cute. I really enjoyed staying in mine.
If you are thinking about RV parks as disorganized, dirty and depressing places, Lake in the Forest will surprise you. It is immaculate, everything is well maintained and it feels consistently like a good part of town.
There are a lot of nice places around the park where you can contemplate and enjoy nature. The place was almost empty when I visited so there was unlimited peace and quiet to enjoy. I would actually say it was a bit too peaceful and quiet. I didn't realize until almost time to leave that there was an active social center in the middle of the place that might have been interesting.
Perhaps it was having just come from Disney, where it is impossible to get lost for more than five minutes without being legally blind, but it would have been nice to see a few signs pointing me towards favorite places within the property.
There was a notebook in the house with lists of addresses of things to do, but it would have been nice overall to have more detailed descriptions of possible activities. As it turns out, the right thing to do is to ask the staff, who had an encyclopediac store of information when asked and could not have been more cordial.
Some of the RVs are decorated with lights and effects in ways reminding me of Burning Man or Love Burn if it had been done on a really strict budget.
The clientele are entirely pickup and RV folks. Hardly anyone had cars. I had my new-to-me pre-owned Mercedes and felt a touch out of place, the city slicker in the country, almost like I was invading a world I didn't quite understand. That was silly of me and amused me more than anything, but this is definitely not Miami.
The few people I met were very nice, and the owner was exceptionally helpful, pointing out sights I would enjoy and showing me her own personal 80 acres of nature.
I knock off a star for two things :The gate procedure and the checkout procedure.
The office shuts down at 4:00pm and they close the gate allowing entry into the park. After that to enter or exit you need to get out of your car, release it, return to your car, drive through it and then close it again. So it feels like you are trapped in or shut out. The owner tells me that the gate serves its purpose of preventing pesky neighborhood kids and the like from coming in and annoying everyone, but there's no question it made me feel a bit alienated from the place. They intend to replace it with an electric gate eventually and that should solve the problem.
Checkout requires that customers clean out the room, bring the sheets to the main cabin, take out the trash, wash dishes, empty and wipe out refrigerator, sweep the place clean and so on. This is a lot of physical labor for someone for whom that is, well, not his strong suit. They charge you a $60 fee if you don't comply. With my complete lack of domestic engineering talent this is not very hospitable. I wouldn't mind paying $30 but $60 just seems excessive.
WiFi, while available, did not work well during my visit. I have Verizon's Unlimited cellphone plan and that worked fine for my stay. I simply tethered my computer and iPad with the phone and had fine functional access, despite the remote location. If you want to use the WiFi, they have several different networks with different passwords for each one. So you might want to program each one individually into your devices. A pain, but having all of them accessible would probably make it easier to find a functioning network.
At $350 per week, I felt the value for money was outstanding. The place is pleasant, relaxing and very well kept up.
