For our One Year Anniversary this year, Al and I decided to treat ourselves to a little weekend getaway to Big Bear Lake and Mountain — one of our favorite places to go when we need to get out of the city for a couple of days!
Big Bear is an easy two hour car ride for us, so we ditched work early on a Friday and were on our way; our little Marty tucked away in the back seat.
There’s something so calming about being in the mountains — the smells, the clean air, and the fact that time seems to just slow down a little bit up there. It feels like everyone is just happy to be there. We didn’t have any major plans in store for our weekend…we just knew that we wanted to go on a couple of easy-going hikes, cook meals together, drink wine, and overall just relax! Al fulfilled one of my biggest dreams by booking us a little A-Frame cabin through VRBO that overlooked one of the skiing mountains. If it had been winter, we would have awoken to lots of skiiers heading down the mountain through the top of our A-Frame window. So dreamy. I always tell Al that one day we’ll have a little A Frame of our own, so it was fun to take one for a test run 😉
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The two hikes/nature walks that we did weren’t super challenging, as Marty is still finding his hiking legs! But man, was he happy out there. The boy loves being near the water. Not necessarily going in it, but being by it, he’s happiest. But being in the woods is a really really close second for him! The first trail we did was Arrowhead Trail around the lake. This is a paved route for bikers, hikers, and dog walkers. But since we went in the offseason, we ended up doing a lot of our walk down by the water so Marty could run around off-leash! The second hike we did was Castle Rock, which is one of the more popular hikes in the area. This one was absolutely beautiful and I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a hike during your stay in Big Bear. It’s just enough of a challenge for any average hiker, and it’s fun to venture off the trail a bit and climb the rocks for some pretty breathtaking views.
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Aside from hiking, Al surprised me on the morning of our Anniversary by booking us a Couples’ Massage later that day at Altitudes Spa in the Moonridge area! Since we both spend our days working at desks for 9 and 10 hours, we’re always talking about how much we need to make it a point to get massages more regularly…but we never do! ha! So this was a very welcome and appreciated gesture! We both left feeling so much better, I definitely would recommend! Afterwards we grabbed a little coffee at Moonridge Cafe down the street in all our relaxed bliss, before heading back to our little cabin.
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The only other place we went out to was Big Bear Brewery in the little downtown area, which we had been to once before! They are super dog-friendly there 😉 Otherwise, we spent our time in our little cabin, where Al played his guitar, I worked on some weaving, and we just kicked back and enjoyed each other’s company. We brought all of our food with us in our big cooler, and cooked all of our meals together, which we enjoyed out back on our little porch…it was honestly the most relaxing weekend ever — just what we both needed!
I am so grateful to have a partner who is down to do the little things. To go somewhere and find the balance between exploring and relaxing. Someone to cook with, to drink wine with, and to love on our pup with! To live simply, and enjoy fully with. I love my little family of three so stinkin’ much, and I think there are a lot more weekend family vacations in our future…or at least I hope so! 😉
Not long before our trip, Al got a new toy to play with — a GoPro camera! He spent the weekend filming little tidbits of our trip to get a feel for all the settings before he takes it on some of his bigger hikes this year. He put together this short video highlighting some of the things we did! I hope someday we’ll have a whole library of family videos to look back on together… enjoy!
xox!
LAUREN LIVES 
Loved this and love you guys 💞💞 (also really enjoyed the mini movie with the go-pro & hope there will be more!!)
there will definitely be more to come!
There’s no doubt in my mind that if you 2 want it, you’ll have an A Frame home of your own eventually.
These pictures make me really want to go to Big Bear. It just seems like somewhere you shut your phone off and take in everything around you.
Al’s video is beyond dope. I need to hire him full time. Let’s get this YouTube thing poppin!
Love you.
that’s exactly how it is! a good place to disconnect. we’ll take you someday 😉
Great video!!! Now I want to go there, with my dogs, of course!!!
Great photos! Thank you for sharing and also sharing the edits. I’ll have to try that hike:)