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.)

The Big Bear Post that should have been but wasn't...*

Andy and I have been under a lot of stress recently due to the Big Move in a little less than 3 months and obviously the impending becoming parents situation. While we really couldn’t afford to go on a weekend away, we really had to lest we slowly go insane.

When Andy asked me where I wanted to go for the weekend, Big Bear Lake was the first thing out of my mouth. It was one of the few places that are within the 2 hour driving range from where we live that I had never gone to before. Most of you may not know, or may not remember, that I used to live in Colorado for a good portion of my late teens\early twenties. With all that time I spent living in and around the majestic peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the last thing I wanted to do in Southern California was go hang out in less than impressive mountain ranges (the Sierras get more impressive the more north you go if I’m to be fair), especially with all the warm beaches to go to instead. But like I said, I’ve never been up there and it’s probably going to be a fair amount of time before I see mountains again. I don’t hear of many people heading to England for the” fresh powder”. Well, I’m sure they have some sort of powder but it’s not the type you ski on.

My younger years in Colorado.  Yes, it was the Nineties.  Yes, I love to scowl.

We started the drive up to Big Bear after getting off of work Friday night. This is a dangerous time to drive anywhere in Southern California, especially the route we had to take. In Southern California there is only one major freeway that goes from the beach cities to the inland cities, the mountains, and Las Vegas – the dreaded Hwy 91. To say the 91 is a parking lot on any given day and\or time is an understatement of extreme proportions. The length of the 91 from Orange County to Riverside is about 40 miles, but it might take you 3 hours to go that 40 miles. Most of you probably don’t give a toss about this information but I’ve got to tell you, if you find yourself having to take the 91 for any reason on a Friday night at 6 PM, take the 241 toll road for $5 and save yourself at least an hour of misery on that fucking Highway of Hell.

HWY 91: Avoid at all costs!  Oh wait, you can't.

(End Rant)

By the time we made it to the base of the Sierras, it was dark and it was starting to drizzle. Andy has had LASIK surgery so he has a hard time driving at night since most headlights create a halo effect creating another layer of the danger driving up the mountains. As he was driving, Andy began to fret. And when I say “fret”, I mean he started shouting, “I can’t see! I can’t fucking see anything!” over and over again. Giggling, I offered to drive. I had no problem seeing the road and as I said previously, I lived in Colorado so I was used to driving mountain roads. Andy refused to let me drive. Soon, the fog rolled in. It was heavy fog where you couldn’t see 15 feet ahead. Andy started to “fret” some more in between “whimpering” and “driving like a fucking girl”. I told him to pull over and let me drive. While he kept pulling over at every turn out to let faster cars by (i.e. all of the cars), he still refused to let me drive. So I kept insisting that he let me take over, in between giggling “girl” under my breath and using the GPS to tell him what type of turn was coming up. It was a long hour on that road and when the fog finally cleared and Andy felt safe enough to go over 15 MPH, he admitted that he didn’t want me to drive because of my “condition”. Like my hormones are surging so badly that I’d decide to end it all and purposely drive off a cliff because the fog was just too much for my “delicate constitution”. Grrr.

Imagine this, but with darkness, drizzle, and the cloud of Zeus upon you.

(End Rant)

By the time we got to our hotel (cabin? resort?) it was 9:30 PM and we were pretty knackered. We popped open a couple beers (O’Douls for me - *sigh*), ate some junk food, and watched HBO until we went to sleep. I will have to say that the minute we were unpacked, I felt more relaxed than I had in months. This was going to be good for us.

*This post wasn’t supposed to be two parts but that’s what happens when my “delicate constitution” takes over. OK, I’m just hungry and its lunch time.