Forested, family-friendly area near Ventura County? (Lake Arrowhead, Ojai: live in, price, store)

[MissLiss]

Hello friends! I am hoping for guidance on a forested area for my family. While we live in Ventura County suburbs right now (and do love it), I grew up in a small, heavily forested mountain town, and I really want my children to get to experience that kind of peaceful nature. We are weighing the possibility of a small, modest cabin to spit our time between.

I have looked online at Pine Mountain Club, Lake Arrowhead, Idyllwild, Big Bear, and various other smaller towns, but it’s so hard to google much information about these places when they are so small. I know nowhere will have everything, but would love your thoughts on places to consider! Here are the “wishlist” items in order of importance (again, totally understanding that nowhere will have everything):

Safety: I want to feel safe if I go to the grocery store at night, or walk a trail alone with my kids, or have a package sitting for a while on the front porch. I definitely want to avoid places with serious drug problems or other things that can drive up crime.

Clean air: I have read some of these mountain towns near LA actually have very poor AQI overall, and we need to avoid heavy pollution for health reasons.

Access to nature: We love to hike, bike, fish, and scramble, so anything is great, but really we’d be happy with access to some great forested trails.

Some form of basic services: An urgent care and a grocery store (more than a bare-minimums market) would be really nice to have; a little bit of a downtown would be a big perk, but not really necessary.

Not super-sketch, super-windy roads to get there: I get truly horrific motion sickness and we will need to go back and forth at times between the mountains and Ventura County, so I would love it if the roads didn’t leave me sick. I know this might be the price to pay, though! (Hence its place last on the list)

I’m hoping there’s somewhere within 3 hours-ish of Ventura we could check out. Farther would be okay if it's a really great fit! Honestly, the forest part is more important than the elevation, so somewhere with lots of lovely trees by a lake might still be worth considering (though I'll add Ojai is not on the list - it's beautiful, but not truly forested in the way I'm hoping to find, and it's too expensive). I’m aiming to keep an open mind. Thank you for any input!