The Big Bear post that was.

Just to prove how relaxed we were, Andy and I slept in until 8:30 on Saturday morning in Big Bear. This is a rare thing for us as I tend to start flopping about the minute the sun rises. If I’m to be honest (and maybe a bit gross), most weekends I’m cursed with the dreaded trifecta. The trifecta in my world is the waking up at 6 AM to pee. In the midst of falling back to sleep after my pee, I’ll realize that I have to actually – you know – take the kids to the park (or whatever euphemism you want to use) and so I get up again to do that. After that’s all taken care of I’m a bit more awake than before so trying to get back to dreamland is tough, especially since the tri of the trifecta is about to hit. That of course is hunger. If my stomach isn’t growling too badly, I can usually sneak in another hour of light sleeping. That usually doesn’t happen and by 6:30 AM I’ll be downstairs eating some Raisin Bran wishing “How Clean Is Your House?” isn’t the one thing that is on when I’m trying to digest food. Of course the cat, who is very insistent that everyone be up at the exact same time lest there is a fire or a shortage of cat kibble, will start walking all over Andy until he gets up. This is why most Saturday mornings you will find both Andy and I laying on the couch at 7 AM wondering what the fuck we are going to do until 11 AM when the rest of the world decides to join us (in being awake, not being on the couch – our couch isn’t that big).

That was a long fucking paragraph to stress to you how relaxed we were. I hope you enjoyed it.

Big Bear Frontier: Our hotel (cabin? resort?).   Sadly, I did not sleep in the covered wagon.

After getting up, we spent a leisurely couple hours getting ready. And by getting ready, I mean watching the tail end of “the Hangover” followed by the tail end of “Men in Black II” and eating oatmeal raisin cookies. By 10:30 we were ready for some real food and walked up the road from some breakfast.

I should mention the nature, shouldn’t I? There was some. Nature that is. Um…it smelled really fresh…pine tree like? Uh, there were some boulder type things, and the lake, and the trees like I mentioned earlier….oh, and it was so pleasantly cold. I wore a jacket – for warmth!

A Christmas tree with toilet cleaning products on it.  That's nature-y, right?

After breakfast we walked around Big Bear Village (“the Willage”) for a couple hours where I dragged Andy into loads of tourist shops looking at kitschy things with ‘Big Bear’ written all over them. Technically I was looking for a hat to wear because my ears were cold and I can never seem to remember to bring one the 18,000 hats I have at home with me anytime we go somewhere.

The Moose Hat

The sad deer hat

By the way, I determined that you can’t have a proper shop in Big Bear unless you have a big carved bear made from wood in front of your store. A little helpful advice from your friend Moe for those of you thinking you might want to open a kitschy store that sells stuff with ‘Big Bear’ written all over it anytime in the near future.

 

Because I'm so helpful, I'm even pointing you to the right direction to get your wooden bear sculpture.

Around noon, we ended up walking back to the hotel (cabin? resort?) to grab the car so we could take a pleasant, relaxing drive around the lake. On the other side of the lake from Big Bear there’s this small little town called Fawnskin. I remarked to Andy that ‘Fawnskin’ was kind of a sick name to call a town. He agreed, “It’s a bit like calling something Babypelt, isn’t it?” I can attest that there isn’t much going on in Fawnskin. I did get excited for a moment when we passed ‘Fawn Park’ thinking to myself that it had to be this wonderful fantastic place where you could go and pet baby deer, but I was sadly disappointed it was only for human children. I mean, I doubt they would kick a fawn out if it happened to wander in the park, but if I were a fawn, I’d be staying the fuck away from Fawnskin at any cost.

After our drive, we headed back to the Willage to see if we could rent a boat. I will say right now that if there’s a body of water that I haven’t been on, I’ll want to go on it. I love being on a boat. It’s one of my Most Favorite Things. I’d totally own a boat if I was rich and I wasn’t worried that people would keep begging me to take them out on my boat like I always do to people who have boats (sorry Patrick & Michele). The first marina we went to was only renting a 10 seater pontoon boat for $110 an hour. Since we failed to bring our 8 friends with us, we walked a half mile down the road to the next marina who was thankfully renting a scary 4-person aluminum fishing boat for $45 for 2 hours – life vests included! We were so in.

I think Andy looks wicked handsome in this shot.  He's always handsome but maybe it's the motor in his hands that really brings it out.

The two hour boat ride was by far the best bit of the whole weekend. Andy drove most of the time being very safe and avoiding other boats and making sure to put the white flag up when we just stopped to float along. When Andy asked if I wanted to drive, I said, “hell yeah!” and proceeded to put the motor at full capacity, driving in circles so our little scary aluminum boat bounced through the wake getting us wet. I was giggling the entire time.

The hat I decided on.  I know, I look like a Conehead.  I would have gotten the moose hat but it didn't cover my ears.

The rest of the weekend was fun, but boring to blog about – we had dinner, we went to go see “Red” (see that movie, it’s awesome), soaked in our room’s hot tub, and then spent the rest of the evening the same as before – junk food and HBO. It was exactly what we needed.

(I would like to say that even though Andy was such a granny driving up the mountains, he certainly wasn’t coming down. The road was clear, the weather nice, and Andy drove perfectly….that is to say, fast. He passed other cars! I was so proud.)