Big Bear Lake

We have so many items on our bucket list for this summer! We're trying our best to get to as many as possible in this summer, but I'm doubtful we'll get to all of them haha. One of the things on our list was Big Bear Lake, California!  Big Bear Lake is up in the San Bernardino Mountains, about a two hour drive from El Segundo It's a bit of a tourist trap, but it has so many fun activities to do! We have now been there twice :)

Our first weekend up at Big Bear Lake was with another intern at Dustan's work and his girlfriend. We left early and planned on going mountain biking before meeting up with them for lunch and an afternoon on the lake. We ran into a little problem on the drive up though.... Dustan heard whining then a sharp pop. The heat from our exhaust pipe had melted one of the tires on Dustan's mountain bike! As soon as we got into town, we had to make a small pit stop to buy a new tube and tire (we found a good used tire for cheap, yay!) before heading up into the mountains on the south side of the lake to go mountain biking!

The Skyline trail at Big Bear was really awesome. The weather was a toasty at a whopping 85 degrees, which made for a sweaty bike ride. This was some of the funnest mountain biking we had ever done. The uphill and downhill was very broken up. The trails were smooth with few rocks. Dustan loved the banked corners.

We met up for lunch with the friends, then headed to the Lake to do some swimming! The water was quite chilly, so only the boys actually swam in the water. We relaxed on a small beach for a while, playing frisbee, skipping rocks, trading stories, and playing in the water.

Then it was time for our kayak reservation! We spent an awesome two hours paddling around the lake. We floated and chatted for a while, raced, looked at the beautiful houses on the shore, jumped and swam off the kayaks, and watched the sun begin to set.

We ran over to a park after kayaking to try and catch the tail end of the sunset, and just barely missed it! Dustan was psyched to play with our newish lens for our camera though, our 50 mm prime.

The next day, Sunday, we went to church with a very welcoming ward full of visitors. Afterward, we took a leisurely (because we took it so slow) hike up to Castle Rock for a view of the lake before it was time to head back home. The end of the hike included some bouldering, which both of us enjoy. The views of the lake were stellar!

Two weekends later, we were back at Big Bear Lake again! Dustan and I both had Friday off, so we decided to go camping. Because it was such a last minute decision, most campsites within a few hours were already filled. But Big Bear Lake had areas for off-site camping! So we headed back.

On Friday, we stopped in the mountains near Lake Arrowhead (on the way to Big Bear) to find a swimming hole called Aztec Falls. After a rough dirt road that scraped the bottom of our car, Roxy, a few times, it was a short hike before we began hearing music, shouting, and swimming. After scrambling down a sandy path, we saw the coolest swimming hole! There were areas to go cliff jumping and swimming and sun bathe on the rocks. There were groups of teens being a bit obnoxious with their crude music and language, drinking, smoking, etc, but we had fun nonetheless :)

Check out my rad swimsuit tan line, haha

Dustan immediately jumped off the highest rocks into the pool while I did some swimming in the very chilly water. We got out of the water to warm up and people watch before jumping back in. We repeated this process for a couple hours for a very fun and relaxing afternoon!

When we got into Big Bear Lake, we stopped at a ranger station to get some info about camping and eat at a quaint little old fashioned burger shop before going up into the mountains. By the way... Dustan forced me to put the following two pictures on here, haha.

Dustan says, "My majestic Roxy! Always so reliable."

Not to brag or anything, but we find the BEST camping spots! In Utah, we found a great little clearing down in Nephi off the Nebo Loop that we camp at all the time. Here, our spot was even better. We drove up to Skyline (also where we had gone mountain biking, in the mountains southeast of the lake) for a ways, looking for pine trees close enough together to hang our hammocks. We found the greatest spot! It overlooked mountains and a valley, an incredible view straight from our hammocks.

That night, we took pictures, played cards, ate snacks, and listened to Harry Potter book 6 on CD. We were so excited to try out sleeping in our hammocks for the first time. It got a little cold that night and my dear husband who can snooze anywhere didn't sleep too well, but it was altogether very enjoyable!

We decided to try out some night sky pictures with our camera... We still need a lot of practice and a tripod.

We had an incredibly lazy morning, again listening to Harry Potter and swinging in our hammocks. We had originally planned to go mountain biking again, but there was a race going on that afternoon on the Skyline Trail. So, instead, we took a ride down the Alpine Slide (for only $6)! Though we were scared we were going to get stuck behind some ridiculously slow people, it was a blast speeding down the slides.

It was just a little bright... 

And those were our adventures at Big Bear Lake! Though we really enjoyed our time there and we would love to go back, we're not sure our summer bucket list will allow for it :)