There and Back Again

Lake Arrowhead (taking it in)

Sometimes you just need to escape from the norm and take off to a place where you can just be at peace, relax, think about nothing and just be with the people that matter most to you.  Trips like this are rare for us and this weekend was very much needed in our lives right now.  We all needed a few days to shut off from the rest of the world.  In our journey to accomplish this, there was lots of wine, talking, laughing, exploring, eating, more drinking, pictures taken and winding roads involved.

This trip was especially exciting; we had never traveled anywhere alone with just my mom.  If my mom was going any distance for a number of days, my dad would also be alongside with her, they were a team.  He isn’t with us anymore, only in spirit.  Since his passing, mom has been working non-stop to keep her mind from running away with her into a depression.  Seeing her able to relax a bit and enjoy her grandkids and the company of loved ones was just wonderful.  She took pictures the whole way up the winding road to Lake Arrowhead; and I didn’t have to worry about pinning my eyes open because the winding road was suddenly fun.   You can just tell she was relieved to have a break away from the home in which she lost her husband without having to be in her workaholic state of mind and I wanted her to enjoy every moment of it.

The view at night

Once we reached Lake Arrowhead, we stayed with my God-father who has a beautiful cabin home there; he also has more sagacity than anyone I’ve ever known in person.  This man was has been a great part of my life and part of who I am today.  This night we caught up on each other’s on goings and indulged in some wine before heading off to bed.

Big Bear

The next day, we got brave and decided to travel further up the mountain to Big Bear Lake.  For most of the drive up and back down my kids had a “weeeeeeeee” fest, they were loved it!  We found a nice little park near the lake were the kids played their hearts out.  Traveled 7000ft up a mountain to take my kids to a playground, that’s awesome parenting…!   

Feeding the ducks

Though, we couldn’t get away with being plain awesome… So, we also let them feed the ducks on the lake and in doing so my daughter would follow some of the ducks that got closer to her, until they didn’t want to be followed any more and then she’d run after them.  She tends to do this often even at home and gets a kick out of it.  

Muddy

Well, this time she got herself in a little dilemma, we hadn’t realized that there was a small patch of extremely soft sand, which didn’t look like mud, next to the beach and so you can imagine the next thing that happened…  She got her little feet stuck in it!  We had our eyes on her, the whole thing happened within a blink of an eye.  Luckily for us, we plucked her right out, the mud rinsed off pretty easily and I had a backup outfit backed in my purse for both kids, for “just in case” accidents like this one.  After this we did some splurging and had lunch before heading back to Lake Arrowhead.

Backup Brain and Me (Selfie)

One of my favorite things we did was go pine cone hunting.  During this time of year there isn’t many because they just haven’t fallen off the Pine Trees but we did it anyway and the turnout was great.  Hopefully in a couple months or so we’ll try again and find some huge ones that my God-father likes to boast about!  I think it would be exciting for my kids.

This was pretty much what we did the whole trip, shopped, explored, ate, drank, fed the ducks, took lots and lots of pictures, laughed and enjoyed the roads and fresh air.  We could do this at home in the city, but the experience and the sites are far from the same.