Big Bear Expedition – 05/14/2015

Welcome back to Outdoorsman4Christ!  You know every once and a while I get this restless feeling and feel the need to change up my daily routine.  Well last week I experienced that feeling.  So I said to myself, “I am going somewhere, somewhere far away and different”.  I checked into a couple of different options.  I considered going to the desert, going out of state, or possibly just heading over to Lake Skinner here in Temecula.  Well I finally settled on Big Bear Lake.

For some reason I have always had this obsession with mountain communities and Big Bear in particular,  I will own a cabin up there some day.  Anyways, I figured I would head out early and get a good half day of work in and spend the night at a local campground.  After checking some online reviews I settled on Serrano Campground.  So at 12:20 AM the morning of my departure I made the reservation for the site.

This is by far the most spontaneous thing I have ever done, but I just felt the need to get out there and do something.

Unfortunately due to the late night of work I had just finished (hence the reservation time) I didn’t hit the road until about 10:00.  My mom reminded me that you are required to carry tire chains when traveling in the mountains and that got me thinking about snow.  I had already checked my phone the night before and it said that snow was not in the forecast, but we were getting rain in Winchester so I counted that as a loss (missing out on the rain that is).  Well when I checked my phone on departure guess what?  That’s right, snow!

Now I was totally stoked, not only was I going to get to drive in the snow but I was going to tent camp in it as well!  So I headed over to Walmart to pick up some tire chains, come to find out they only stock them until the end of April, bummer!  Not only did they not have tire chains, they didn’t have snow gloves or long underwear!  So that started a big scouring of the valley in search of tire chains, snow gloves, and warm undergarments.  You would not believe how hard it was to find everything.  Long story short I ended up finding tire chains at an Oreilly’s Auto Parts on California Oaks Blvd.  So I didn’t truly hit the freeway until about 11:15.  Oh by the way I hit the freeway WITHOUT my other two items, no one had snow clothes, not even Big5!

My plan was to cut all the way over to Rancho Cucamonga and pay a visit to Bass Pro Shops, of course they would have snow clothes, why wouldn’t they?  They stock everything! Right?!  Wrong.  Well partly wrong, they had just pulled their winter merchandise off of the floor THAT MORNING.  But the store associate was nice enough to go grab a few items from the back room.  So when everything was said and done I hit the freeway heading for Big Bear.

I bypassed a section of the freeway due to a bad accident and started up the 80 to Big Bear at about 1:00, just in time for the start of the storm, Oh and by the way, this storm looked like a ravenous beast:

So now I was truly ecstatic, I was actually going to camp out in a legitimate mountain storm!  It may seem ridiculous for me to get this excited but hey..  I do live in Southern California, so this isn’t exactly a weekly or even monthly occurrence even in the dead of winter let alone the middle of May.

Anyways I continued up the mountain and the storm slowly progressed from rain to hail to snow.

Before I go any further, I truly did plan on spending a good deal of time working at Starbucks…  But that didn’t exactly pan out…  See I really was there, and I was working!

But of course that didn’t last very long, because I was distracted by the snow!

So I stayed for maybe 20 minutes and went and grabbed a Subway sandwich.  I then headed over to the campground.  I showed my reservation to the park ranger and she said, “Oh you’re staying in my favorite site!”.  This made me happy because their website was actually a little difficult to use in my opinion, so I had no idea what sort of campsite I was heading to.  It actually was beautiful, I didn’t waste any time setting up camp so these are the only photos I took before the snow started to fall:

I see now that I didn’t get a picture of the lake view when I arrived, but it was gorgeous.  By the time I took a picture the snow was cutting down the visibility.

I really liked this site, especially for setting up my tent, I was able to push my tent stakes in by hand, but they held very well at the same time.  This is a completely different experience from Dixon Lake in Escondido.  The earth over there was so hard that I actually bent some stakes and gave up.  Anyways I set up my tent and had just pulled out my cooler when it really started to come down:

It was only just then that I realized I may have a problem….  My fire pit was full of snow!  This did indeed turn out to be a big problem when I tried to get a fire started.  Between the wind and the damp ground it took over 30 minutes to get the fire to spark, but I was finally able to get a decent one going:

So I proceeded to cook my dinner and warm up by the fire.  I burned through a bundle and a half of wood in about 2 hours, which really isn’t that bad.

I had stopped by the local Von’s before setting up camp so I was prepared with some good eating.  Jalapeño cheddar sausages!

After burning through my wood, eating dinner and drinking some hot tea, I decided to turn in for the night.  I forgot exactly how difficult it could be to maneuver inside of a tent with my gear all over the place.  Plus I was majorly out of shape during this trip so the altitude was not fun!

But after some effort I was able to arrange everything and get to sleep…  well I was able to lay down, sleep apparently wasn’t part of my body’s plan.  I kept tossing and turning for hours, believe it or not I was actually getting hot in my sleeping bag.  So I kept going through this vicious cycle of being too hot and then too cold.  Plus the wind was howling and I couldn’t help but think about how much snow must be falling outside, I really wanted to go out and see it!

So I watched Netflix for a little while (yes I had cell service, lame for a camping trip I know) and finally fell asleep.  If I remember right I woke up around 5:00 and sunrise was at 5:15.  I made a quick video of the first glimpse outside of my tent, but wouldn’t you know that it is too big to embed in this post and too small for me to bother uploading to youtube.

So long story short there was barely any snow on the ground at all, but there was a really heavy frost layer.  So heavy that it took me roughly half an hour to get a blaze going… again.  This seemed to be a common theme on this trip, me being really cold and my firewood being extremely stubborn, haha.  After I got the fire going and warmed up I had to start packing.  I had read on the campground’s website that there was supposed to be some kind of bicycle tour coming through Big Bear that morning, and that the roads leaving the campground would be closed from 8:00 – 4:00.  Luckily it was postponed due to the weather so I was able to leave without a problem.

Big bear truly is beautiful and I look forward to owning a cabin there in the future:

I made my way to Denny’s and enjoyed a fantastic breakfast, although I felt really weird because I looked like a lumber jack, haha.  But the food was good and so was the service:

I drove around for the remainder of the day and had my car take a pretty good picture:

Someone was even nice enough to take my picture so my car could rest:

On my way out I decided to head over to Lake Arrowhead, it wasn’t very far and I still had plenty of daylight left.  On my way over I ran across this awesome arboretum (a botanical garden devoted to trees), but I didn’t get very many photos of it:

Anyways I finally made it to Lake Arrowhead and I took in the sights for a few minutes:

And then I made the drive back home, which is always my least favorite part of any journey.  Don’t get my wrong I love my home, but I love adventure as well.  So I am torn every time I return, should I extend the trip or just follow my plan?  I almost always end up sticking to my plan.

So if you ever get that restless feeling like you need to get away and do something, I say do it.  As long as it’s legal and clean.  I ended up driving 280.3 miles overall, not a super long trip but enough of a trek to quench my adventurous side, for now…

Sorry this post took so long I have been busy setting up my new business.  I will post more content as soon as I have time.  So until next time this is Greg, over and out.