We stayed in Rose and Jim's cottage for a week with 5 people. The cottage was very well furnished and maintained. We did not plan to spend very much time in the cottage, but ended up getting a rainy day to stay inside, play games, and watch movies.

Staying at Fox Lake was our first experience as a traveler on VRBO and we are very satisfied. Jim and Rose were both very friendly and knowledgeable of the area. They even provided us with listings of local events which helped us fill in some downtime on our vacation.

The sunrise was definitely worth waking up for 3 hours early. From the cottage, you are at the lake in about 30 seconds with no roads to cross. We ended up renting Waverunners from Jet Funn and did not have any issues despite the reviews. We did not end up renting a boat due to the rainy day, but Barnacle Bob's had great day rental prices for ~50 HP pontoon boats from 6AM to 6PM. However, if we were going to tube, waterski, or wakeboard we probably would have rented a higher powered deck boat from Spring Lake Marina. Just be sure to call ahead/go online and reserve watercraft from the above locations, especially on the weekends.

We rode our bicycles to the Chain O Lakes park which is just a few miles east. There are a few challenging hills if you plan to bike the entire way there, but a majority of the route is on a dedicated asphalt bike/pedestrian path. The park has limestone paths roughly wide enough for 4 people to walk abreast one way, and they were largely free of debris.

We visited Morreti's and The Rusty Nail while here which we loved and would definitely return to. However I might pass on El Puerto if we visit again. Maybe the dock access to the restaurant adds to their popularity, or maybe its the deck seating to look out over the lake, but I wasn't really impressed with the food. Maybe it was just a bad day, but the recipes seemed bland compared to other Mexican restaurants I'd been to. At any rate, the food was edible I'm not severely disappointed that we went there, it's just that the most memorable thing was watching carp eat corn tortilla chips.