Big Bear Camping

Schoolsssss out for summer! … and Fall. As long as my grades are sufficient and I get my transcript over to the university that I’ve been conditionally accepted to, I go back to school Spring of 2010! So maybe it took me 5 years to get 2 years worth of college out of the way. And maybe… everyone around me is graduating. But I’m doing it my way. I’m going to own my own business, whatever it is, so there is no rush for me to get out of school and start trying to climb that chain of command. But, I do want to get it done and over with. So my goal is 1 1/2 years to get the last 2 years done. I’ll do it.

Over mom’s day weekend, we went camping! Without my mom. I know, we’re horrible. In all fairness, she had to work Saturday AND on Mothers day. And we got home on Mother’s day at a decent time, before she even got home from work. And I bought her a new laptop, which was well worth it for her though quite a bit out of my price range at the moment.

It was gorgeous. A bit colder than I expected in mid-May, but I’m not complaining. My dad, Blaine & I went on a Friday night, got there at like… midnight. Saturday Blaine’s mom and step dad arrived in the morning. Here were Blaine & my sleeping quarters…

Yep we slept in the back of the jeep, which in concept sounds comfortable. It’s not. Did you know that’s metal down there under that carpet? In the morning our hips were bruised. Not to mention it was like 35 degrees that night and the car was definitely not great at keeping the warmth in even though there were 3 bodies (Mila slept with us too) in such a small space! Silly me, I thought it would get too hot in there. Wrong.

So on Saturday, the boys (and mila) went off roading. Dianna, Blaine’s mom, and I stayed behind. I had to study for finals. I think I’m going to make camping to study for finals a ritual. It was so peaceful. It was a little hard to concentrate, but I loved it. Studying on a picnic bench, drinking my diet coke, listening to the birds and feeling the breeze on my skin. Ok the breeze and I had kind of a love/hate relationship. Felt amazing, but kept sweeping away my flash cards.

When I got tired of studying, I tied to take a nap in my dads tent, but OH MY GOD those things just absorb tons of heat. I was sweating in 10 minutes even though it was cool and breezy outside. So what did I do? I dragged his sleeping mat out into the middle of the trees, grabbed a pillow and blanket and slept. The fact that there were campers walking by every couple of minutes gawking at me sleeping on a mat in the middle of the forest had no effect on me. It was the MOST delicious nap I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying!

Once I woke up, I decided to go on a little walk. It turned into a 2 hour adventure, but it was nice exploring Big Bear Lake & the campground on foot. I enjoyed the time alone, away from people in general.

It took me almost an hour to actually get to the lake. I knew it’s general direction, but didn’t want to go through peoples camp sites so I kept on the roads and paths, trying to get to it.

I followed beautiful paths like this once I started getting closer…

And I stopped to create cheesy shapes with pinecones, hoping that at least one person would walk by and it would make them smile.

Walked by the general store, which closed at 5pm. I got there at 5:15. Just my luck. That’s ok, I didn’t have any money on me anyway.

And I randomly found some SNOW!

… but I didn’t play in it. I soldiered on… my mind set on finding the lake.

I found an RV Resort…

And a little friend…

EUREKA!

And it was so pretty. So I sat there and hung out for a while.

After sitting around for a while, watching 2 girls let their lab play in the lake (jealous. i have 4 dogs and they all hate water) and hanging out with my little Robin (I think?) friend it was time to go so I could find my way home before it got too dark for me to find my way home.

But first I did a little clean up after some irresponsible fishers

Found a creepy coffin looking thing amongst the brush that I refused to look into to see what was inside

And then I went back to the camp site. Blaine called as I was walking back. I told him I would be back in about 20 minutes. Little did I know I was literally 50 feet away from the campsite by the time he called and I didn’t even know it. Took me an hour to get to the lake and 5 minutes to get back. Go figure.

When I got back, it was starting to get cold. I observed the damage Blaine had done to his jeep.

Wait… did you see that?

He insists that it’s more aerodynamic now. It’s a Jeep with huge tires and a lift. I’m pretty sure aerodynamism isn’t the goal. Aerodynamism. Pretty sure that’s not a word.

Say Hi to Mila. She’s shivering.

So, being the excellent doggie momma that I pride myself on, I fixed that.

Now I know we aren’t the same size, but I think I made it work. Not sure how she felt about it, but she stopped shivering!

Then we had pasta for dinner. Yes. Pasta. I’ve never even THOUGHT of pasta while camping. It was delicious, though. We had to serve ourselves small portions because it was so cold that if we put too much on our plate, it was cold by the time we finished eating.

After dinner, we made a fire and sat around it talking. My little sister was flying home from seeing her boyfriend graduate from Army bootcamp, so I vowed to stay up until she safely landed. I have this crazy fear of planes. It’s so weird to think that I view flying on an airplane as risking your life. So if I hop on a plan to go on vacation, I think to myself “why am I risking my life to go on this trip?” I realize how ridiculous that sounds and I’ve been working on viewing it as a mode of transportation instead. Still working on it. By 11 we were all ready to pass out, so we decided to go to bed.

The second night in the jeep was better. But not much better. We had an air mattress, but it was still freezing. And we were sleeping in a sitting up position because the mattress was longer than the back of the jeep, so we had to prop it up again the seats to fit it. It didn’t occur to us until about 5am that we could put our heads at the other end and raise our feet instead. Duh.

It was a fun little trip. When I first learned of the plans, I was skeptical and unwilling to go. But I’m definitely glad I did.

Oh and so was my dad, who had never been that kind of off roading before. The boys had fun, here are some photos they took. Glad I didn’t go, thanks.