June

So, our plan of going somewhere once a week didn't quite pan out. We went to Big Bear the day after we were sure the kids were safely ensconced in Oregon with their grandmother. We then made plans to maybe even go on an overnight trip, but we were a bit worried about the tires on Christian's truck. We have been talking about getting them replaced since the beginning of the year. We finally figured that we could not put it off too much longer and settled on getting them replaced when Christian finished his student teaching and had more time.

Between when that time came and went, we also put on our to-do list: replacing the shocks. We figured we should do that before we get the tires and alignment. We ordered the parts, took the tires apart, found that we needed a few tools, put the car back together to go get additional tools, came home, took the car apart, replaced the shocks...all except the last one, which we couldn't get into because something was blocking it, had to put the car back together, went yet again back to the store to get another tool in order to access the last shock, came home and finished installing the shocks.

The good news is, the new shock absorbers work great. The bad news is, the ball joints look like they are on their last legs. We can't get the alignment on the wheels until we replace the ball joints so that we don't have to do it all over again later when we replace them. We went back to the drawing board and ordered the new ball joints. But in order to get the old ball joints out and install the new ones, we needed, you guessed it, more tools...expensive ones, at that. Christian did all the research, ordered the new parts and tools, but at this point, the end of the second week was coming to and end. The parts would not get here in time for us to get them installed to go on our trip.

The last of the parts arrived on Monday afternoon. Christian had the last parts installed. We took off to the tire store to see about getting new tires and the alignment on the truck. The tires we wanted were not in stock and had to make an appointment to get all the work done in the morning. The job was supposed to take about an hour and a half. We were there for at least two and a half hours. We came home to get a late lunch and decide what we could do with what was left of our time. The kids would be coming home the next day and we wanted to be at home and available in case of emergency. We had come to the conclusion that there just wasn't enough time to pack up and find a place to go climbing. At the same time, after all the work we put into the truck, we didn't want to just stay home and not do anything. We decided to take a drive out to scout out a new climbing area that we had not tried up in the Lake Arrowhead area.

We arrived without too much trouble and started down the trail to look for the climbing crags. Shortly after heading out on one of the trails, we ran into some other hikers with a loud kid and a loose dog and decided to not go in the direction they were going. Unfortunately, we were pretty sure that was where we needed to go to find our climbs.

We decided to just hike around and explore for a bit as we still had quite a few hours of daylight left and the place was quite beautiful. The flowers were still blooming as if it was still Spring. We ended up hiking quite a ways away from our intended direction.  There were so many beautiful flowers and trees. We spend the afternoon taking pictures and videos.

Unfortunately, we did not plan on taking a long hike. The trail to the climbing crags was only supposed to be about half a mile. We did not bring any water with us. We had a drink for the drive out but finished it as we arrived. So we were not thirsty for quite a while, but by the time we got to the top of this trail, we were getting pretty thirsty.

Christian did find some more amazing climbs on the crags at the end of this trail though, so we definitely want to come back with the kids. But for now, the sun was starting to go down and we were both tired and thirsty.

By the time we got back down near the car, it was still twilight and decided to have a quick look at the proper trail to the original climbing crags we came to see. After a bit of searching, Christian found the trail and we followed it part of the way but we were tired, thirsty and running out of daylight. When a gopher snake lay across our path, we decided to just come back some other day instead of trying to disturb it as there was no way around him on the narrow trail.  It wasn't what we expected for today, but we had a great time on our hike.