Take a look at Lake Naomi  

by Olivia Varnson

Nestled among the Pennsylvania Poconos is the vibrant Lake Naomi community. The Lake itself is a little over a mile long, but the scenery does not stop there. The Poconos feature hundreds of miles of hiking trails and forestlands, ski areas and rivers. And the Lake Naomi community offers golf courses, festivals, casinos, whitewater rafting and countless other adventures.

In the heart of this community is the Mountaintop Lodge, originally constructed in 1928. Nearly ninety years and an extensive remodeling later, the Lodge is still an authentic and welcoming place for visitors to stay. Guests have access to the recreational facilities and amenities at the Lake Naomi Club, including pools, spas, beaches and a fitness center.

To learn more about the Lake Naomi community, I interviewed Robert Jones, Lake Naomi Club’s general manager.

 

With summer vacation coming up, what does the perfect summer getaway at Lake Naomi entail?

Lake Naomi has something for the entire family, but I would say you’re not only taking a summer vacation, you’re creating lifelong family memories. With Lake Naomi, if you bring your children, we have the Kids’ Club – where it’s not just dropping your kids off at the daycare center, it’s taking your kids and bringing them to summer camp while you, the parents, have the opportunity to enjoy yourself. So we will take your children from you, we will take them swimming, give them tennis lessons, golf lessons, different activities throughout the day to keep them extremely busy and having fun. And then you, the parent, get the opportunity to lounge out at one of our seven beaches, go play tennis, play golf, take a hike, whatever it may be. It really makes for the perfect vacation coming to Lake Naomi with the family.

What does the Mountaintop Lodge offer for bigger families or groups and are there other options?

For the bigger family and if you’re staying a little longer, you’ll probably want to talk to one of the local realtors and you would want to rent a home. Where the Lodge comes into play, if you are coming up and you’re thinking about is this the ideal vacation spot for my family, it gives you the opportunity to just test drive the community. You don’t have to put a lot of money out, you have an overnight stay at a bed and breakfast. So you have that experience of enjoying the bed and breakfast but at the same time you’re able to use the amenities to try them out and see what they’re all about and see what Lake Naomi has to offer. We can accommodate bigger families based on the ages of your children, where they can have two different rooms but I think you would enjoy the experience much better if you looked into a rental home for that week, or weekend, coming up with a larger amount of family members.

How close it the Mountaintop Lodge to Lake Naomi?

The Mountaintop Lodge is about half a mile from our main club beach. It is walking distance. There is a walking trail that will take you to our main, what we call Club Beach, where our Lake Naomi Clubhouse, our whole dining facility, our teen lounge, and we have a café on the lower level. And a very nice, quaint duster bar as we call it from sailing – there’s a boat called the Duster Fleet that we named the bar after. But staying at the Lodge, you would be able to walk that distance. You can bike through the whole community but please understand we are spread out over 3,000 acres and the amenities are in different spots. It’s very easy to drive around to the amenities once you are on location.

What kinds of events are there on the property or in the area during the summer?

Just starting with Lake Naomi, because you have so many different amenities and we have so many weekends in the summer month, each individual amenity – whether it’s fishing, whether it’s sailing, whether it’s golf, whether it’s tennis, whether it’s recreation – they all have a certain amount of activities that go on through the summer for the membership that enjoy those particular areas. But golf has a series of different tournaments, followed by barbeques. We have sailing races weekly and on the weekends there are big sailing races. And at the end of the summer we have a big get together with all the winners of the different sailing events. We have a fishing tournament for the children and then we have a fishing tournament for the families. Our Kids’ Club program is probably the highlight of the summer. We have over 300 children that participate on a daily basis from nine to noon in our Kids’ Club program. And then we have 150 to 175 that participate from noon to three in what we call afternoon Kids’ Club. So, every day is an adventure at Lake Naomi. It’s really what you want to make out of it with the different activities and getting involved with the different activities.

What is the most popular attraction or activity among guests during the summer?

Our biggest attraction for the summer that really brings the whole club together, and we have over 1630 members, is the Fourth of July weekend. It’s probably the most successful and well-attended event. We do a three-day event during that time at our Club Beach, where there is constant picnicking, games, face-painting for the kids, different activities that are constantly going on every hour for the kids – races, kayak races, those types of things. We try and keep everybody in the water as much as we possibly can. 

Is there anything else you’d like to share about Lake Naomi?

Lake Naomi also has a lot to offer in the winter months. If you’re skiers, there are different activities that we do each year with our community center. It makes Lake Naomi a year-round destination. The 48,000 square foot community center has an indoor pool, indoor tennis, indoor basketball and fitness. I think one thing we’re learning as a club is that fitness is very, very important to our membership and to everyone right now. Our fitness program, with our aerobics and our boot camp that we have for the children and for the parents, they’re very popular right now. They’re selling out and the families are getting very involved with it.

You can visit the Lake Naomi club website at http://www.lakenaomiclub.com/ to learn more about this special destination.