A Broad Abroad

Great week­end.  My daugh­ter and hubby bought a cute  lit­tle cabin in the Boul­der Bay area of Big Bear Lake. The weather was ideal, high 60s, nice enough to take a lake cruise like the rest of the tourists and learn some inter­est­ing facts: Big Bear lake is the sec­ond largest lake in Cal­i­for­nia, the first being Lake Tahoe. The area was once a gold min­ing mecca.  Sup­pos­edly, in 1800, a hunter track­ing a bear stum­bled upon a creek just a’oozin’ gold, and it soon became South­ern California’s largest gold rush.  Hum…I always thought it was Sutter’s Mill in Sacra­mento.  I guess I didn’t pay atten­tion in school, either that or the cruise cap­tain was smok­ing something.

We also played a few games of ten­nis, which wasn’t really that excit­ing for my daugh­ter, who plays five days a week (a ten­nis geek), but the rest of us had a great time.  I quit ten­nis when I hurt my knee, and became a pick­le­ball geek, but once a ten­nis player, always a “sad” ten­nis player.  I still love the game, but gave it up for a less inva­sive sport: Golf.

The fam­ily are all elec­tronic geeks.  This week­end when daugh­ter wasn’t dec­o­rat­ing, cook­ing or clean­ing, she was on her iPad either play­ing Mah Jong, search­ing Pin­ter­est, which she describes as “hord­ing,” or fre­quent­ing Ama­zon and EBay just in case she might find some­thing she can’t live without.

Hubby, when not build­ing some­thing spec­tac­u­lar, fix­ing everyone’s elec­tron­ics or plant­ing flow­ers, is always look­ing for some­thing new and excit­ing in elec­tron­ics that Apple or Ama­zon has for sale.  When he runs out of things to build, he tack­les his garages: at the river he fills two sin­gle garages with his water-toys; at home his garage looks like some­thing from Mon­ster Garage, and now at Big Bear, he has his own “man-cave” as my daugh­ter calls it:  concrete-stained floor, faux leather walls, dia­mond plate coun­ter­tops, sin­gle cab­i­nets along the wall (all labeled for each kid and girl­friend) for ski equip­ment, snow­boards, and along the back wall, a pool table and moun­tain bikes.

Well, soon enough our week­end was over, but it was a won­der­ful get-away.  I plan to visit it often dur­ing our 100-plus days in the desert.  Thanks kids!