The start of something wonderful...
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2010
1
5
123
Trip End
Oct 01, 2011
Big Bear, California
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Our starting miles clocked in at 53,220.7 miles. We expect to go about 17,000 miles or so but we'll see where we end up at the end of it all. There's a rough draft to our plans (chasing the warmer seasons around the US, counter clockwise), but we want to see where the road takes us. We are throwing caution to the wind, a bit, by not having any set dates. If we love a place, we stay longer. If we hear of a place that's a must see, we go. We get bored, we move on. After all, we are traveling by RV and have no reservations.
Well, that's not entirely true as we departed for a destination wedding! I love weddings, especially destination weddings, so what a perfect induction to our trip. John and Becky decided to be true to themselves and instead of having the conventional wedding, they celebrated their love on the slopes where they met.
Pre-departure, I decided to call up all the suggested places to stay and see if we might be able to dry camp in their parking lots. Very first call paid off, the reception site at Elks Lodge were willing to allow us to stay the night of the reception and I pushed the envelope for another nights stay, pre-wedding. Although it sounds like a place to lay your head, it's actually more of a gathering venue without sleeping quarters. The location is mostly known for their popular Friday bingo nights which was actually cancelled for the reception. (I had a feeling there might be some bingo wedding crashers.)
This was the perfect practice run for driving Big B in snow country and see how we'd all handle the cold weather. However, the drive to Big Bear was a breeze since it had not snowed for awhile. We didn't get much sleep the night prior as we were using every last second we had to prepare for the upcoming year. We drove away, waving to Steve's parents, and the neighbors, John & Janet, at around 5:30 am. Sleep deprived, we drove through Big Bear, looking for a place to take a nap. There was a huge lot in a shopping center so we parked and headed to the back (one of the cool aspects of driving your house around) to catch some shut eye. As we tried to drift away, we realized the parking lot had speakers playing some blue grass. Being too tired to do anything about the "noise" we didn't have too hard a time to slip into dreamland.
When we woke up, we went into our kitchen to prepare our lunch (another cool aspect of driving your home around). Ya kinda forget where you are until you open up the blinds and are reminded that you are occupying a space (or two) in a parking lot. The music outside was much more enjoyable during lunch!
Ideally, we'd like to use public restrooms to avoid filling up our black tanks (so we can avoid emptying our tanks for as long as possible). So, we decided to check out our neighborhood for this very reason. As soon as I opened the door, I saw that we were parked in front of a speaker blasting right down on the bedroom portion of our RV. Perhaps not the ideal location to park when napping.
Not wanting to arrive too early, we had a look around the area before arriving at the Elks Lodge. To our surprise, the lot was pretty big and get this, had free electrical hook ups! Sweet! We soon realized that most of the people, inside the Elks Lodge, hung out in a Member's Only area, behind closed doors so we could easily sneak in and out of their restrooms! Perfect!!
The next morning, we opted to walk a mile & a half to the wedding site, rather then risking not having a place to park Big B. We thought about buying bikes for this very reason but with all our gear for the slopes, we decided to wait until we can sell all that off. Since we are not towing a vehicle, we will be using our legs or public transportation until the end of the winter season. Thankfully, we were not dressed up but instead the attire for the wedding was ski/boarding wear. Thank goodness, no heels!
The ceremony was in a wooden lodge type setting, with a fireplace and staircases leading down to the entrance aisle. John wore the traditional black but along with the groomsmen, were head to toe in boarding wear. Becky was dressed in white ski wear and her bridesmaids dressed as snow bunnies. The ceremony was beautiful!
Afterwards, we managed to hitch a ride with John's brother, back to Big B. We quickly made lunch and grabbed our gear for a half day on the slopes with John, Becky, Jason, Todd and Kurt. John & Becky's photographer/videographer met the them on the slopes to film them in action. We caught up with them and did a few runs for the camera. I'd love to see how that turned out...what a great idea!
The reception was a perfect ending to a great day. We got to hang out with Steve's best friends from high school. There was food, drinks and lots of dancing to be had. The best bit was that we just walked across the parking lot and into our bed! :)
The next day, we took Rusty for a hike around Big Bear Lake then drove off to our next destination...VEGAS baby!
