Oops!

Early Saturday morning, May 22, we leave the campsite at Heart's Bar and went back into Big Bear Lake for groceries and other supplies.  Wanted to do something different, so we went to the movies and saw the new Robin Hood movie with Russel Crowe.  Enjoyed it.  Had a nice Italian dinner and drove on to the Rim of the World highway, Route 18, and got a campsite on the very top of the mountain near Arrowhead Lake.  It was cloudy and cold.

When I had gone up to the bathroom that evening, I was looking around.  The campground was full.  However, I was wondering why every other car there was a 4-wheel drive~~except for ours.

Well, the next morning, Sunday, May 23, I found out why.  John always gets up earlier than I do, and he usually lets me sleep, but this morning he woke me up and said that we need to get out of here as soon as we can.  I sit up out of my sleeping bag (luckily, a 5 degree bag I have had for years) and see the world covered with snow and it is still coming down in droves.  

We pack up in a hurry, and observe others also leaving early.  It was necessary to go up a small grade to get back to Route 18, and we just couldn't make it.  We just kinda slid back down, managed to turn around and went down the back of the mountain, carefully, until we came to a little town that had the best breakfast we had had in a long time.  We hung out at this restaurant until the snowplow went by and decided to try again.  Unfortunately, this road was not on the map we had.  We decided to try to go in the general direction we needed to go, which, maybe wasn't the best decision.  We couldn't seem to find the way down the mountain, just more mountains.  Beautiful, but not what we were looking for right then. 

I do most of the driving, and I have to admit I wimped out when we got to the place where there were several cars stuck, some with chains!  John got out and tried to direct traffic, helping to push some cars and just commiserating with other drivers who were hopelessly stuck.  Just when it looked like we had a chance to get out, here comes a raft of cars just buzzing through, not realizing there was trouble ahead.  Another round of pushing.  Then, at the next opening, we are getting ready to go and here comes a big old snow plow, which I thought at the time was going to scrape the side of our car, but all he did was plow us in!  This had already been a long day, and it wasn't yet noon. 

Finally, we managed to get out of the mess and made out way down to the town of Arrowhead Lake, where we parked, walked around, and were able to enjoy the snow.  Later on, we joined the line of cars of weekend tourists from Los Angeles and made our way down Route 18, out of the snow and into the high desert.  It had been a hard day, so we treated ourselves to a hotel room for the night in Herperia, California.