Oktoberfest in Bear Country

So Jake and I have been married for 7 years and have never been away together since our honeymoon. We finally were able to have a weekend away and Jake's parents were so great and came out to watch the kids. We decided to go up to Big Bear Lake for our weekend away.


We had so much fun up in the mountains away from the busy city. The one problem is that we aren't use to cold weather and that weekend was really cold! We woke up Saturday morning to snow and 15 degree temps! In spite of that, we went to the local K-mart, bought beanies and gloves and set off.

We went to this little cafe for breakfast on Saturday which was way cool. We wanted to try and hit the little local favorites and this was one of them.

It's famous for it's huge pancakes, so Jake decided to order two pancakes thinking they couldn't be that big. Between Jake and I we only finished one of them.





The only thing I really wanted to do while we were there was the Alpine Slide. It was very cold this day, but that didn't stop us.





On the ski lift with Big Bear Lake behind us.




When we were planning our trip we read a lot about the mountain biking trails and thought we would be adventurous and ride up to the top of the mountain and bike down. Well, when we woke up to snow we decided against biking since neither of us have been before, and we wanted to see our kids again, so we just hiked down the mountain instead. It was so beautiful being up so high with the Lake and trees all around. We both miss the mountains so it was fun to be there.


Proof that it did snow.

Okay, so this picture is of a bobcat that we saw while hiking. Now I was concerned about seeing wild life, especially bears, and Jake assured me we wouldn't be seeing anything since that mountain was busy with people all year round. Well, we see this bobcat and Jake was way excited and kept talking about how he couldn't believe we saw a bobcat. Then he goes off about other wild life and how we should watch our backs because cougars attack from behind and that we should listen for bears. I knew he was doing it to scare me, which worked, but I was on my toes the rest of the hike down.

Pretty views from the mountain.

Here is another local restaurant we checked out with yummy Italian food. The atmosphere inside was very fun.

The view from our balcony



Our trip was very fun. It was weird leaving the kids but they had so much fun with Grandma and Grandpa. Poor Grandpa didn't feel well all weekend, but he still came and helped with the kids. Here they are before they left.