High in the Mountains ……

California is the land of many opportunities.

It seems that on any given day you have the opportunity to be chased by a wildfire, moved quickly by a mudslide, or be shaken vigorously by an earthquake.

                        Those are the negatives.

                        But……

            There are positives that balance all of those other things out!

 “Like what Mr. Optimistic, a chance to get some exercise while running helter-skelter?”

            Nope! Would you believe that you can be surfing at one of those iconic Southern California beaches like Manhattan, Redondo, or Malibu, and two hours and sixteen minutes later you can be schussing down the slopes of a 10,000-foot mountain?

                        Yes! You too can join the SoCal community of outdoorsy-sports-like folks and zoom(?) from one destination to the next all in one day! Desert Hiking! Mountain Skiing! Ocean Surfing! And everything in between! With only the Traffic Jams to hold you back you can participate in your own variation of a unique kind of Triathlon!

                        By now you have surmised that we are back in California, and we are staying at our stalwart fav, the Joshua Tree/Desert Hot Springs KOA. This is our third stay at this fine location which is just a little north of Palm Springs, and our World Cruise friends, Sandi and Steve (we were here last year and later in September, we visited them up in the Oregon/Washington area where they reside for real, in Vancouver, Washington.

                        We are here for about a week and while we will be doing some things that we have not done before, we will not be jam-packing the days with all things left to be done as this as also a “West and Wewaxation” time.

                        We visited with Sandi and Steve the evening that we arrived to catch up and plan out some of the activities. It was suggested that we take a day and visit Big Bear Lake and Lake Arrowhead, both in the San Bernadino Mountains. These are the tallest of several mountain ranges that circle the outer boundaries of the greater Los Angeles area. We heartily agreed, especially me, as it was 60+ years ago that I visited these places when we lived out here. There was no fantasizing this one, I knew that I would recognize very little of what were once a few sleepy little local resort towns.

                        The next morning, we hit the I-10 West and ‘headed for the hills’ as it were, the landscape changing all along the way. These mountains seem to leap out of the ground as the cities that lie at their feet only have elevations that range from 500 to 800 feet. Then as you hit the access roads and start the climb, you can hear Goose yell from the rear, “We’re goin ballistic, Mav!” and as quick as one can maneuver all of the hairpin turns you find yourself up at the lakes which are around 7000’ feet above those cities, with the peaks an additional 4000’ higher! It is quite impressive when down below and looking up!

                        And it is just as impressive when you are up top looking down! We neglected to start early enough to get to the beach for surfing and I guess you could call our walk to the car our “Desert Hike”, but we did not actually get on the slopes either, so you could say that our attempt at that Triathlon fell miserably short of that goal, but we did have an Awesome Lunch, some Great Shopping, and a very nice Circumferential Drive around the Lakes, so in a way, we did have a different kind of Triathlon…. thank you very much!