Mountains

This afternoon we had some time off, so decided to do a bit of exploring. Firstly we went South to Cleveland National Forest, where you could drive through a bit of the mountainside, which was very cool. We thoroughly enjoyed the breathtaking roads and views, coupled with the beautiful sunshine.

After stopping off for some lunch, and having acquired a taste for the mountains we drove North towards "Big Bear Lake" - the local winter sports venue of choice. The cool thing about this part of California is that while the flat plains are only a few hundred feet above sea level they are consistently surrounded by mountains that soar into the clouds. Now, we all love mountains, and we all love a nice stroll in the hills, but we had no time for that. Fortunately, neither do most of the folks from LA, and so they've built great big roads that we can power up in our gas-guzzling V6 trucks.

So, up we went, 1000ft, 2000ft, the markers at the side of the road rolled by. We made our way up to Rolling Springs, the first settlement on the hill, just after the 6000ft marker, and it was cold. Unfortunately our relatively tight schedule didn't permit us to go any further, and I suspect it would have gotten even more spectacular beyond that.

Overall we rarely strayed more than 30-40 miles from the hotel, but we got to see a lot. And the best bit was that although we used thousands of gallons of 'gas', it only cost a few cents...