Big Bear Lake

Driving up to big 

Myself, my mother and sister were off camping in Big bear lake in San Bernardino, It was slightly tough to book a campsite however we managed to get one, this was a great time to test out my 1st tent which i bought off a sale for real cheap, So early monday morning we started off on our journey, after may be an hour of driving we were driving parallel with the Angeles mountain range, the mountains over here in the U.S are very different to the once i'm familiar with back in Sri Lanka, My sister called them the "paws of a Lion", and indeed they look like gaint paws!

Not after long we started driving up our selves on the edge of the mountain! and we had a windows role down to let the fragrance in the air to come fill us all, ok i just sounded like writing a fairy tale but trust me this was the truth!  the flowers were blooming yellow in colour and they were on either side giving us a grand welcome to the Angeles National forest!

and soon with it came the Big Bear Lake! "the second largest lake in southern California" so said the boatman. and we started to drive around it!! the chill in the air and the hot sun made it a perfect day! a little chilly but still it was magnificent!  we needed to have our lunch so we parked by a meadow, and we picnicked by the meadow, this was that "perfect picnic"  right off the book! even though i believe in off the book in many things in life! 

And with more energy we went into the little town of big bear, small shops on either side of the road, one shop we stepped into was a Jerky shop, and i was suprissed to see Aligator jerky to be on sale, i was tempted much to have a taste of it, but then i opted to taste elk only on the belief that Alegator is more in demand than the elk, but now i'm wandering whether elk too is a animal that is in demand in the black market, hope i made the right choice. how ever with some elk Jerky as some snacks we went on a touring boat which kind of took around the lake, showcasing houses of actors and what not, the information was real boring apart from a few, but the captain of the boat made it sound real intresting. I 

took time off seated on the steps instead on a chair letting the breeze go right pass me! 

and soon afterwards we decided to head for camp, and there i started to pitch my tent, even though the mordern day tent is advertised to be the least complicated i dont thing it gets any less easier than the simple old school two man tent which my father owned which we once pitched on our garden back in Kandy, any way overcoming a few difficulties we soon managed to set the tent up! and my sister took over getting the inside of the tent ready for the three of us!

We needed fire to cook our dinner so i took out our charcole tin burner which was suggested by my friend Pradhan, we never saw it work so today was the day it stood the test! and sure it passed with flying colours, and thanks to that and later wood burning we had a big dinner, so with that over we quikly snuggled our selves to our sleeping bags where we had a good night sleep.

Early morning was cold as excpected or may be even more than i expected, but soon i managed to start a fire going which at first i used to warm my hand but then afterwards used it too prepare our breakfast! and then after having a good yummy meal i packed my bag with a few warm clothes and a couple of energy bars, with that i started to hike up to Bertha Peak all by myself :P i was excited to use my GPS which i bought a couple of weeks back how ever too bad the batery was low so yea i kept it till i go up the mountain to check the elevation!

So soon i started my long hike up the mountain the first bit was not too tough but the latter became tougher with each step it definitly felt a lot tougher than i normally feel, i was wandering whether it is becuase i was all by my self and missed all the motivation needed which i usually get when i hike up with my buddies back in sri lanka, but as soon as i saw bits of the big bear lake all the breathing calmed down! i took some time off gazing over the lake, it was blue as it can get! back in Sri lanka i remember lakes being green. anyway i kept pushing myself until i reached the tops of bertha peak my gps read 8164 feet thats the highest mountain i'v climbed so far, but then this was not those big hikes, any way i still enjoyed it and will remember it forever!

and i came back down after about four hours where i met my mother and sister who by them sleves did a small walk! at least my sister tricked my mother to walk while she chilled standing in one place :P so after reuniting our selves we headed to a animal rescue center where we saw bears, eagles, raccoon and many more!  surly the bears were the highlight of them all for me! apparently they are very dangoures here in the U.S yet they look adorobale :P.

that ended our camping trip to big bear, so we headed back home along the winding roads, it was a great trip loved it and enjoyied it :)

with akki and ammi 18th, june 2012

Nothing like the great outdoors to ease our souls

We started planning this trip long time back, we all badly wanted to go. Dinuk ayyia and all the others chipped in with the planning and preparation. Any way it was a bad start Dinuk aiyya had to stay back to look after his grandfather, and to add to that some hala bulu all because of me(I’m sorry guys).Any way we started packing our bags at around 2100 hrs which went on till 0100 hrs.

Any way thisal aiyya and I packed our clothes into one bag, I carried light wearing the same denim right along, but should say Pradhan aiyya had the lightest personal belongings, he had his whole bag filled with the food stuff, in the mean time dinuk aiyya was running around to get things right. One bag needed some stitches pradhan aiyya did half of it but was sleepy to do the rest(mind you it was late and he has had many sleepless nights before), any way I started doing the other half only to wake up and see a gentle laughter from pradhan(I know I stitched bad hehe).

Every body arrived at pradhan’s house and we were good to go, rushed into the railway station bought the tickets and we were soon heading to kandy, shopped for some meat and toilet roles, ah niru akki broke her shoes after getting them mended we started our way to wathegama in a slow bus my self and pradhan was used to this, but I’m sure the others hated it hehe. From there we hired a van up into the mountains of modolkalle.

As soon as we set foot on our camping site we did feel the adrenaline rushing through our veins it was such a nice country side to be in, walking in between lush tea leaves and the knuckles range just out of reach but well in sight to see God’s amazing creation, there we met Sugath who took u to the camping grounds, we pitched our little sweet home. We needed a fire going to cook our lunch we were so lucky to find a few logs, I started to cut them into pieces while pradhan straight away stated a fire going, niru akki/watch dog ;) did not let us come into the tent. She kept it all clean and tidy the bed was perfectly made which lasted two nights.

Any way by this time our lunch was ready to be served it was prima noodles, it was so yummi. We had a whole of three hours of day light to be spent, so we walked up the hill, walking up the un even rocks, brushing our way through the tea leaves into a pine forest we came. They said it was the twilight forest (never watched that silly movie),the wind gushing through the trees which made the loud roar brought in a chill and straitened my hair(sorry fur ;)) hehe. We walked though it and into the tea plantation with the sky above looking clear with only a few clouds letting us look down from the worlds end into her mighty Victoria she is massive. We had a bit of laughter looking down at some “beef” grazing on the pastures down below, we wished we had them for dinner or at lest some mutton ;)

We headed back to camp after our walk my self, thisal aiyya and pathum aiyya went out in search of a bathing spot and found the coolest(coldest I mean). Water gushing in through a small tight spot to fill this amazing pool, it was crystal clear until we ran in(of course) with howling screams, screams of warmth they were it was fantastic. We couldn’t stop screaming it just came in from our gut, we dried our selves and went up to lend our hand in cooking, thisal aiyya and niru akki were such great cooks they prepared the chicken and it was “finger licking good” hehe, pradhan build the fire while the rest chipped in with help with the rest of the proceedings. We had French fries too(we know what we re talking off ;) ). It was a great dinner we had together seated around the fire, I loved the chicken and ate very part of flesh it had(rare occasion).

After which we stepped into our clean sleeping area thanks to our mighty watch dog ;), and spent some time playing uno the rest of the tent was laughing at my humble set of card pack never mind:). I can’t remember the scores but rememer pathum having the whole card pack in his hand(a bit of exaggeration). We slept well since it was slightly cold we got up one or twice.

The sun shone into our tent bringing in the news of another new day, we had milo hot milo that was. After which my self and thisal aiyya went into our super cool bathing spot, since we didn’t have tooth paste and hadn’t brushed our teeth last night we had to brush the:(. So we took a piece of chalk coal and brushed our teeth I of course used a bit of soap too hehe. After our bath we walked up to the tent, after a little while we were ready to hike up the mountain and into the misty forest.

Thisal aiyya who was very fast kept up with our guide but the others found it slightly difficult. I felt terribly felt unfit ah and Niru akki too, any way all of us were not at all bad we walked quite a distance and onto the forest we went , the high trees above you and the misty air around you it was a picture perfect highland rain forest I couldn’t believe my eyes it was wonderful. walking below the arched trees breathing the fresh air it was so refreshing.

We walked our into a small stream, we went with it the water was freezing cold and niru akki’s nails were turning blue hehe. We paused at the sudden drop we were on top of a waterfall it was simply amazing, we only saw below and around the water fall when coming back because it was misty the first time around. We walked along paths where leaches were marching forward to suck our tasty blood, only four leaches bit me but pathum had the bloodiest leg:).we sat down for lunch where we found a warm rock which had a stream trickling by only a couple of feet away. We had salmon and bread for lunch and thanks to my foolish estimation we ran out of bread so we had to eat the baked beans with marie bisckets. We liked our lunch may be not after the baked beans started working out in full swing hehe.

We walked back looking over the thick green mountains brightly colored sky with sheep like clouds it was a magnificent view. And niru akki was so taken away by the beauty around her that she missed her step and fell down on her knees on the rocky surface scraping her legs left and right, she bravely stood up refusing any aid and started walking back to our sweat home(I know you were only trying to doing a zummba move). We all were very tired and sweaty so we headed straight to our bathing spot, it was a nice cool bath we had splashing water at each other and screaming the words of warmth.

After all this we played cheat even though I won it was pretty boring, so we went back to our official game UNO enjoyed every bit of it with yujith aiyya wanting to change the color to purple, Mr Skip(pathum) skipping me on every turn while the good charming pradhan Aiyya being nice to his neighbors and yujith and niru bombarding each other with never ending draw fours while thisal aiya helplessly collects cards from Mr skip. I can’t remember who won but pradhan was well off.

The light was fading away and we needed a fire going to cook our dinner ,pradhan(as usual) set the wood on fire in no time and soon we were gulping magie down our throats,we walked our way to wash the dishes, by this time the backed bean were working at full force, with which we set back to camp with sprouts of laughter here and there hehe, after which we started playin 304 niru akki and myself did pretty well loosing only two(I think), yujith aiyya learnt the game and played quite well with thisal aiiya who earlier played with pradhan.

During this time Mr skip, skipped him self out to answer a nature call, he didn’t come for along time may be even a hour, so the tent got a bit worried so my self and thisal aiyya set out in search of him, when we met him our funniest assumptions was made crystal clear by the answer he gave.
Que - ninda giyada(did u fall asleep)
Ans – poddak withara nindath giya (yes a little bit)
It was so funny, so with pathum ayyia’s return every body was safe and sound and with that we all closed our eyes and had Good warm night ;)

We woke up early next morning after drinking our milo my self and yujith wanted to poop the right way, so with our toilet role into the bushes we went, both dug two holes and into them we pooped. It was great the tea leaves providing the perfect cent, while the bushes covering us just enough the brightly colored sky above and the knuckles range within our site. It was truly the best toilet ever. After all that we had a bath but yujith was missing his tea, so both of us brewed some tea using the buds we plucked the other day, it had such a great flavor and it was the best tea I’ve tasted.

Now it was time to leave, I’m sure all of us were sad to leave slowly packed our bags and we were good to go. Said by to modolkalle and off we treaded our way down along the edge of the mountain with only a foot to spare. Niru akki was closely guarded due to high class performance in the zummba moves on previous occasions hehe. we walked our selves down to the road, and two nice gentlemen let us in into their double cab till wathegama, going in the dikki was a unforgettable experience. We reached kandy by 1300hrs and came into colombo at 1612hrs our camping trip ended but I’m sure the memories will last a life time, we all enjoyed it a lot.

I’m so happy that I was a part of you all(dinuk,pathum,niru,thisal,prdhan,and yujith)
And happy to have done it with you’ll.

Thank you lord for being with us from the start right to the end the end, And thank you lord for the indescribable mother land Sri Lanka