Easter weekend was spent in the Sierra Nevada about one and half to two hours drive from here, depending on traffic. (I have marked our route in blue.)
On Easter Saturday, 3rd April, we set off heading NW on Interstate 10, then headed N on California State Highway 30, followed by CSH 18 to the San Bernardino National Forest, up to Lake Gregory and Blue Jay, and on up to above Lake Arrowhead, where friends’ daughter and husband have their cabin.
There were lots of wild flowers beside the highways when we set off which I have not been able to get close enough to identify yet (!), and desert scrub beside the roads.
Further on we passed through a massive wind farm for mile, after mile,
after mile,
with literally thousands of turbines – as far as the horizon and the eye could see.
I actually felt physically sick and trapped, quite claustrophobic, at the sight, as if something straight out of John Wyndham or HG Wells had happened.
If that is what the climate control enthusiasts want, count me out, I have seen eco-Hell. I’d rather give things up than live like that. I reckon photo-voltaic cells are the way to go: put more money and research into improving them, I say.
As we got further north the plants and trees began to get thicker. A rich blue sky and the sun still shone and everything looked lovely. We turned sharply up into the mountains from the plains, following place names like Running Springs, Great Bear Lake, Lake Arrowhead, then Birchwood Drive, Grizzly Drive and Cottonwood Lane. We passed several large cabins and some old, very small ones, with wooden shingles on the sides and roof which looked like the homes of old backwoodsmen.
When we arrived at our destination the others had only been there about 20 minutes but already had a picnic lunch set out on the table. Bread, cheese, salami, pickles, salad, tortillas, crisps, beer, juice etc. It was very ‘fresh’ when we got out of the car, not quite as warm as it looked! The altitude difference certainly made itself felt temperature-wise.
Views from the terrace:
After lunch we decided on a ramble, so a short drive down to Lake Arrowhead itself and the local village, which was re-built in the 1980s to look like an Alpine village with statues of bears everywhere. Friend’s husband and I were slightly breathless and dizzy which I put down to feeling migrainey but the others said was the effect of the altitude: at only 5,200 feet I thought this unlikely but the others said that they had been the same for some months when they had first bought the cabin. I suppose we had climbed from nearly sea level, at 220 feet, at the bottom of the mountain – the altitude we have been living at for the last week, up to here in only half an hour, but I was unconvinced!
We walked for a while on a trail round the lakeside: I and friends’ daughter are interested in houses, architecture and property generally and had fun looking at how people have designed and extended their lakeside homes from cabins to stately holiday, and more recently, permanent, homes. They are also looking for a berth to rent for the summer for their boat, for water-side barbies, water skiing and fishing, so we checked them out too as we walked. The trail can only be accessed through a gate with coded lock, as only people with cabins within a particular area, can belong to the Lake Arrowhead Association. This group make sure that the area is conserved, no trees are removed and no litter is left around: an annual subscription helps in this aim. Since the local population doubles or even trebles in summer I can see why some regulation is necessary.
Home to the cabin for copious amounts of tea and a rest before going out later for a celebration meal at the Antlers Restaurant in Twin Peaks! (Those of you who watched the TV Serial ‘Twin Peaks’might well wonder.) According to my friends, eating out in Southern California is a costly business, over-priced food of dubious quality, so it was with some trepidation that we set forth, but the younger members of the party had eaten there once before and said it was good.
It was a shock leaving the cabin after the sun had set: temperatures plummeting down to the 40s F – cold after the desert.
We had to sit and wait for a few minutes until our table was ready and passed the time talking to the owner of the Restaurant. He rents the business from the building’s owner but knew a lot about its history. I had been looking at the ceiling of the ante-room we were sitting in and thinking it looked like moulded plastic, not very nice. But apparently it was pressed tin, the original ceiling from 1920 when the place had been built.
A gold prospector had come to the area when no-one lived up there, only coming up for the hunting and fishing in the summer. He was somewhat of a backwoodsman and decided to live there all year round: to this end he built this cabin out of local wood. His wife lived up there on the mountain alone with her children and husband and used to spend her spare time in the winter writing about their life. Copies of her books were in the ante-room but we did not have to wait long enough for our table for me to read them which was a shame.
The restaurant is housed in what was his family home, somewhat extended in 1925 but basically untouched since then, with the original wooden, sliding, sash windows. In that year he had built a large room onto his house, to be used for dances for the few other settlers who followed him up there to live. There was a gallery for the musicians and everything was built out of solid tree trunks, some huge, which were varnished and held together with cement, but otherwise left untouched.
It is a beautiful building, surrounded by a board walk, and the food was wonderful: we were all astonished and thinking of every possible occasion to go back. The prices were steep, a main dish for $26, about £18, but worth every penny. The service was just as good and very friendly: for an Easter Celebration of friendship it was just right. The owner said that food on the mountain was dreadful and he felt that the mountain (I was entertained that that is what everyone called it) needed a jewel, and that is what they had tried to make. When he took it over it had been a ‘dive’, a drinking den, with bare floors and a shabby bar and bad reputation. Now it is lovely, shining wood, solid stone and small lights weaved everywhere into vegetation. The huge carved wood chandelier which hangs in the centre of the restaurant came from Disneyworld!!
Otherwise everything is original and authentic.
As we ate, mist swirled down the road, sometimes we could not see across the street: apparently we were high enough that the cloud cover descended below us, and it was low cloud that was drifting in a ghostly fashion past the windows.
A slow, leisurely meal ensued, the high points being hot, freshly made sourdough bread with a crunchy crust and creamy butter, chocolate martinis made with Godiva chocolate liqueur, vodka and liquid chocolate, local venison and moist, juicy, bitter chocolate cake with fudgy chocolate filling, unlike anything I have tasted before. I can’t drink alcohol or eat wheat and dairy because of these miserable migraines so could not eat the cake anyway but had a taste off someone else’s. I had a sea food salad with tomato salsa and candied almonds, which was lovely.
Afterwards we picked our way home through the cloud which was rapidly thinning and fell into bed. Absolute quiet all night, with my sloping wooden ceiling partly in the roof, with the smell of fresh pine woods drifting in through the window and a wonderful sky, just like the desert, neither has any light pollution.
We camp every summer in the area around Lake Arrowhead. It’s a great place to get away.
Check out the Cedar Glen Malt shop outside of town. Great food there!
…as for the windmills, frankly I’d prefer to see a single brick building burning natural gas and producing more efficient electricity. I used to drive by them every time I went to Palm Springs for work. At night we’d park and listen to the sound of the wind turning the blades. It’s pretty loud.
LikeLike
A good tip, I’ll pass it on and look for feedback. Yes, its a great place, especially when you live in the hot spots and need to cool off a bit!
LikeLike
I love the shot of the receding hills between the trees 🙂
LikeLike
More luck than artistic judgement I’m afraid, but one tries! Thanks.
LikeLike