The Big Bear trip of a lifetime... and almost a deathtime

I will explain my blog title at the end of the blog. This is going to be a long blog by the way, because I took a lot of pictures and I may end up interjecting little bits of commentary.


That's Kyle inside THE CAVE. Yes, there is a cave that we tend to visit in Big Bear, only to smoke ourselves out minutes later (not like WE smoke, we set fire to a piece of paper and are smoked out... did I really need to explain that to anyone on here? Probably not.)

John... also in the cave.

That's the fire that smoked us out of the cave, with the fire starter himself.

I just thought this picture was cool cause you could see the smoke in the air through the flashlight light. Maybe it's just me.

SMOKED OUT!

Kyle with his expertly-built snowman.

Alright, so my snowwoman isn't all that well-built... and my eyes are closed... oh well. We can't all be so photogenic as Kyle.

The snow covered creek bed outside John's cabin.

Footprints Kyle and I left on our hike. I thought it was pretty? Maybe it's just me again.

I actually didn't take this one. But I took the next few because, well. I got a little bored on the hike... shhh! Don't tell.

I took it. It's goofy. I looked goofy. Whatever.

I didn't mean to take this one. I was about to take another one of myself but I tripped on a rock and... well. There ya go.

There were footprints leading into this log so I took a picture of the inside to see if there was an animal inside. It kind of looks like there was, maybe?

The last one I took of myself, I swear.

Kyle's and my snow people having a snowball fight. Can you see the tiny little snowballs??

So now for my near death experience. John and I began our descent down the mountain and got about 10 minutes away from his house when he realized that he left something back at the cabin. He made a u-turn and was about to made a right turn onto the main road when a cop drove by and saw the very dangerous turn John made onto the road, in front of oncoming traffic. Seconds later the cop turned on his sirens and John and I started freaking out that we were going to get a ticket. The cop was driving the opposite direction so we figured if it was enough of a big deal to him he would turn around and follow us. He didn't. So we got to the cabin, got the forgotten items, and heading back down the mountain. When we got a little further down there was a huge queue of cars and an orange sign that said "Accident Ahead." We were waiting in this line for nearly 20 minutes before we started moving again. It turns out a car had driven over the side of the mountain, right in the part where the railings end (what are the chances??). When we drove past the parked ambulances we saw the very same cop that we had seen before. It occurred to us that if John had not remembered to go back to the cabin we would have been a couple minutes ahead of that policeman when he got that fateful phone call, and granted the exact same circumstances, the car that went over the edge could have been us. Trippy to think about.

That's my story.