Since this was our last weekend in the “Pass” (as this area is known), we figured we’d better take the advantage of a beautiful day on Saturday to take a drive to some of the nearby spots we’d been wanting to check out. Big Bear Lake and ski areas were only about 45 miles away according to our GPS, but of course we wanted to stay away from major interstates and congested areas. “Let’s go up the back way, through Oak Glen (a quaint town of orchards and all things apple only 15 miles or so up the road), maybe check out a couple of geocaches, and then make our way over to Big Bear Lake.” Sounded like a plan, so I grabbed the camera, a couple of bottles of water and some snacks, and off we went!
First Stop – Oak Glen.
OK, so we didn’t actually stop (it’s not exactly prime apple harvest time), but the views were impressive as we were heading out of town –

And we really enjoyed the signage!

Trust me, they really know how to do “curvy” here in California!
Oh – and I wish I knew exactly what mountain that is in the distance. It was in my viewfinder for most of the day, but the best I can do is “San Bernardino Mountain”. And it’s a guess, folks. Just a guess.
But I digress with my lack of geography knowledge…..

See, there it is again!
Since we were headed to Big Bear we knew we would be coming into some snow. Remember last week when we had 2-4 inches of the stuff? Well, the mountains near here got 2-4 feet. Or so it seemed by the look of this car coming toward us on the highway –

Uh, sweetie – the snow was LAST WEEK, and maybe you could have cleaned a little more off the driver’s side??????
But for us, the roads were clear.

And even though the plowed piles got higher and higher, the drive was lovely!

We did take a little detour to do a geocache, and while Gary was walking around with his trusty GPS

I was busy clicking away at the beautiful snow covered landscape.

(I think this cactus was a little concerned about the blanket of snow….)
Finding the cache with all the snow presented a little bit of a challenge (and we hadn’t done much geocaching lately, so we were a little out of practice), but I finally noticed a straight edged thing under a root.

I made Gary do the groping (I’m not really fond of sticking my hand into dark “what just might be there” spaces, and we were rewarded with our first “find” in several months.
There were several other mountain roads that Gary had hoped to explore, but they were all closed. Such a disappointment for a guy who was really hoping for some dirt road adventures.

Anyway….on to Big Bear Lake.




All along the way we saw cars pulled over and folks getting ready to find a sledding hill or strapping on their cross-country skis or just plain having a snowball fight. Those are some renegade snowballs on the lake ice!
And there certainly was snow enough for everyone.

Maybe they are waiting for spring?

We literally crawled through the town Big Bear Lake – not only was last week’s snow the first BIG snow in a couple of years, but this was the first weekend day that the roads were open. It took us 2 ½ hours to drive the 10 miles along the south side of the lake. (We stopped for lunch thinking that maybe we could “wait out” the traffic. Not only was the lunch the slowest meal we’ve had in a loooonnnng time (2 hrs. for a burger and a bowl of chili), but the traffic was still waiting for us when we were (finally) done.) I have to tell you, 4 ½ hours of Big Bear Lake is just a little bit too much!
Not wanting to go back the same way we came, Gary chose to head north, pick up a cut-off road that went over to Yucca Valley, and return from the East. It was a great plan, except we never found the short cut road. Apparently the plows had never found it either. The road we thought was “it” turned out to be a little connector road that took us back to Baldwin Lake and was only about a ½ mile long.

But it did (almost) give him his dirt (mud) road fix.
Almost.
Enough chatter – here, in the order of their appearance, is the rest of drive home.


Baldwin Lake


Down the other side of the mountain until we ended up in the “high desert”.

We were losing daylight fast –

Caught the sunset going through Yucca Valley

(sorry for the blurry sunset. It’s very tricky taking sunset shots from a moving truck!)
That trip home was definitely the “long way home”!
Here’s our day’s journey on the map –

(You can see our missing”shortcut” home – it goes east above Big Bear and heads over to Pioneertown and Yucca Valley. It would have been sweet if it had been open!)
Zoomed out a bit –

And here’s a zoom in -

Yeah, there were a lot of those curves!
You know, not everyone can take what should be a 100 round trip drive and turn it into a good 200 miles. And even with the crawl through Bear Lake and the incredibly slow lunch service, it was indeed a Very Good 200 miles!

Have I mentioned before that we are the SOWER Group Leaders at Cherry Valley Brethren School? Every SOWER project has its own Group Leader. The GL is the main liaison between the host (the folks that run the ministry) and the SOWER workers. They are responsible for making sure that everyone has what they need when they need it, and they’re the ones who get the “what next” look from their fellow SOWERs. We haven’t been GLs for a while (well, unless you count when we’re group leaders when we’re alone on a project. Then we’re just the GLs for us. We’re pretty good at that!). I confess Gary doesn’t enjoy being the GL, though he is really a good one. He just prefers doing the work rather than working at keeping everyone else busy. But most of the GL stuff is behind us, and the only thing that remains is the GL Report. At the end of the project we meet together, go over some questions about the project (Is the information provided correct, were the parking spots “as advertised”, did anyone have any problems – you know, that kind of stuff.) And then we have to summarize what we did in (hopefully) 100 words – or less, they say! Ha!
So here is what I wrote –
We welcomed Gary and Laura “back” to Sowers – they have been off the road for 10 years! It was good to have them back, and we all had a busy month. The men worked their way through a long maintenance list – painting, repairing plumbing, building platforms, leveling concrete and yard work to name a few. They tackled a major remodel of the teachers’ lounge, complete with new flooring and paint, and re-tiled the floor in the ladies’ room. The ladies did cleaning, painting, filing, organizing and generally tried to lend a hand where needed. We also enjoyed several nights of great fellowship.
102 words.
I think I did pretty good – at least in the number of words category. But trying to condense the last three weeks into 100 words is really pretty impossible.
How can I explain (in 100 words or less) how a simple request to remove a broken vending machine from the teachers’ lounge resulted in a full scale remodel. New flooring, new paint, new arrangement.
From this (part way through the destruction phase)

To this.

How can I explain (in 100 words or less) the fun we had on “Spirit Day” when the theme was “The Fifties”. We couldn’t come up with any poodle skirts like some of the staff,

But I think we held our own…..

Do I even try to express (in those 100 or less words) what it felt like to wake up to this one morning?

Not a chance.
And how can I relate (in 100 words or less, please) how sweet it was to end the project today by doing a crafty cut and paste job


since earlier in the project we were doing this –

How can I include (in those 100 words or less) how we (all 8 of us) were blessed to be able to receive free Chiropractic care for the whole time we were there. I had never been to a chiropractor before, but Dr. Bob thought he could help those of us with colds too, so I gave it a shot. Did he help, or did the cold run its course? I don’t know – but I know I feel just fine now! Oh, and we’re all perfectly adjusted too!

And somehow the “We also enjoyed several nights of great fellowship” does little to tell about the great meals we shared

or the fun we had when we got together for games.

Nope, when you only get 100 words you’ve got to keep it brief.

Just the facts, Ma’am. Just the facts.

The rain has stopped. We have not floated away. But the weather certainly got more interesting before the sun returned. I think it was Wednesday that I was alarmed to see “white stuff” on the truck -

So imagine our surprise when we woke up to this on Friday morning -

Now THAT’S some “white stuff”!

It continued to snow and rain for the rest of the day

and I just kept repeating to myself – Southern California….Southern California….

But Saturday dawned bright and clear. Ah, sunshine! Even though the temps were still in the low 40′s it still seemed like a beautiful day! I took an early morning drive to check out the snow in the area. I drove just a couple of blocks south to get a clear view of the mountains to the north (does that make any sense?). And it was quite a view!

Those mountains look like they’ve been covered with powdered sugar, don’t they.
I drove back to the school, but continued north for just a little bit. Seems where we are parked was right on the snow/rain “line”, since just up the road a piece the scenery was quite wintery!


I think those palm trees were also saying …Southern California….Southern California……
This shot is looking south again – no snow on those mountains!

So it was quite a week, weather-wise. The coming week looks much calmer. Not a whole lot warmer, but temps in the 50′s and more sun than rain. Sounds good to me!

So. In case you haven’t seen any national news this week, it’s raining in California. In fact, it’s been raining since Monday. And will continue on raining all the way through tomorrow. This hasn’t been just rain. Oh, no. We’ve had the kind of “rain” that makes little piles on the grass and the windshield.


Then there’s been the wind, oh, and those two 4.0 earthquakes. Yes, the last week has been quite a ride! Tonight we were supposed to join with about 20 other SOWER’s who are working nearby projects for a potluck. Unfortunately, with all of the local flooding, it was cancelled. But we made the best of a disappointing situation and quickly scheduled a game night for just the eight of us! It was lots of fun -

(We’re a pretty serious group of card players, aren’t we?!).
Plus it gave us an excuse to help eat up one of the desserts that was scheduled to go to the potluck!

Yummm – thanks, Nancy!
But even though the weather has been incredibly miserable (we even noticed that the supermarket was running low on milk and bread – just like back East when the forecast calls for snow!), I did manage to find some small points of beauty amidst the raindrops.

There’s a old movie set/town not too far from Joshua Tree National Park called Pioneertown. Here is a blurb from their webpage -
Pioneertown was built in 1946 as a movie set for western movies, including the movies of Gene Autry, The Cisco Kid, with Duncan Renaldo, Annie Oakley with Gail Davis, Judge Roy Bean with Edgar Buchanan, Range Rider with Jock O. Mahoney, and Buffalo Bill Jr. with Dick Jones. The movie set was to provide a place for the actors to live, and have their homes used as part of a movie set. Some of the original investors in the town were Roy Rogers, who also built the Pioneer Bowl, Sons of the Pioneers, which the town was named after, Dick Curtis who was a professional villian in old movies, Bud Abbott, Russell Hayden, who played Lucky on the Hopalong Cassidy series, Louella Parsons the Hollywood gossip columnist and Philip N. Krasne: The Man Who Saved Pioneertown.
Several folks had mentioned it to us as a local point of interest, so we thought since we were over “that way” while spending some time with our buddies, John and Rosie (remember, from our Alaskan Adventure? They are working at another SOWER project in the area), we would check it out.
Can I say it was a little less than I expected?

Hmmm. I think they stage some gunfights or something on weekends beginning in April, but apparently at this time of year it’s pretty darn quiet. It was a good chance, though, to play around with the Sepia setting on my camera – and then I had fun messing with my editing program -

Yeah, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.
Except for these little guys!

Even in “sepia” they were very cute. And very alarmed that Mama was on our side of the fence.
But our day didn’t end there.
We headed south

to hook up with some other friends who were staying at a lovely RV resort in Hemet. They were playing in a Seniors Volleyball Tournament – and it looked like they were having a lot of fun!


That’s Pete – he was really cranking out the points!
This was a lovely RV resort – quite a step up from our usual Wal-Mart parking lot.
Among the many great amenities, we were able to enjoy a quick game of billiards

and an equally quick round of shuffleboard on their world-class shuffleboard courts.

I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “world class shuffleboard courts”!
We certainly had a great day reconnecting with these good friends and it was a grand way to start off our long weekend.
As for the rest of the weekend, I bet it looked a lot like yours. A couple of chores, a couple of naps, an errand run or two, church on Sunday, a pot of yummy chicken soup. Back to work tomorrow, and I’m glad there’s a little of that soup left over. The forecast is calling for rain the entire week. The good new is we’ve got some inside work lined up.
The bad news is it’s the student’s bathrooms.
Ah, the ever changing life of a Sower.