This article was originally posted on Active Rain in September 2007.
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Anybody who tells you that it doesn’t rain in Southern Calfornia was not with us up at Big Bear over Labor Day weekend! What an adventure that was! I grew up in the Northwest and I know a thing or two about rain, but it seems that I’m way out of practice.
I’m blessed with a group of distant cousins here in Southern California that “adopted” me a few years I moved down here. Every Labor Day, without fail, this bunch meets up for the long Labor Day weekend for an adventure. When I first joined in, the trips were tent camping and campfires. As we get older and ok, softer, the trips tend more toward cushy cabins or luxury motorhomes.
This year we went the cushy cabin route. As I was packing up my husband and daughter for the trip, LA was in the midst of a blazing heat wave of the national news-making variety. I’m talking 90’s at the beaches kind of hot. I checked in with family up at Big Bear who went up a day earlier as was told to bring a jacket for my daughter because there had been some sprinkles. Jacket, yeah right!
We got up there Saturday evening. Sunday morning everybody was running around like maniacs deciding how to spend the day. This is no small group. We probably had 30 people in two cabins and a couple of motorhomes. And this group does not sit still well.
As I said, everybody was running around trying to coordinate movies, hikes, zoo trips and stuff like that. Having just started my “relaxing” weekend, I was somewhat overwhelmed. Rain to the rescue! It started coming down big time right after breakfast. Not a big deal, but everybody stopped talking about the zoo.
Unfortunately for our golf contingent, they were already out swinging their clubs when the real fun began. Yup, thunder and lightening. I was thinking for the umpteenth time that it was a good thing I never took up golf.
Over at my cushy cabin, we ended up spending the afternoon laying around reading. Now THAT is my idea of a relaxing holiday weekend. A relaxing, drizzly lay around the house day. For a little spice, the thunder and lightning kicked up again later in the afternoon. Let’s just say I know how to gauge the closeness of lightening by observing the timing of the lightening flash and the matching thunder and this stuff was close enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In fact, we had one strike that sent up a little cloud of smoke on our street and caused the headlights on our car to stop working for 24 hours. Yikes! Never boring when I’m with this part of the family.
We came down the mountain on Monday in another cloudburst. All in all, I felt like we traveled a good two states away when we got back to the continuing heatwave in LA on Monday afternoon. Big Bear is only about 120 miles away, but worlds away in weather that weekend. Now that is what I call a get away!
