Lake Arrowhead II

On Sunday morning, July 29, we found the Mormon Church, halfway around Lake Arrowhead.  "This is a Hindu temple!" Bryce objected.  It was, indeed, an unusual-looking LDS chapel--more Gothic than Hindu, to my eye, but not standard issue.  It was gorgeous inside, with dark, heavy, exposed beams, vaulted ceiling, decorative woodwork, and huge windows framing evergreen trees.  A missionary told us that this was one of the last non-standard LDS churches, before the Church Architecture Department began making them all alike.  At one time, the congregation must have been much larger.  Now, a branch met there, and one speaker was introduced as holding five Church positions!

We assembled a picnic of roast chicken, hummus and crackers, grapes, and cookies, and took it to the Heaps Arboretum.  After lunch, Kirsten, Bryce, and Alyssa assembled collections of interesting rocks, twigs, and cones.

We took two hikes.  The first was along a nature trail at the Arboretum, with a trail guide to identify baby sequoias, mammoth pine cones, and other flora of the San Bernardino Mountains.

We also took the animal footprint trail, criss-crossed with prints of raccoons, deer, bear, lynx, and even a snake. 

On Monday morning, we returned to Sweets'n'Stuff for a candy-making lesson.  The shop owner had melted a pot of chocolate and mixed a batch of caramel as her supplies.  We made half a pound of candy apiece, including chocolate dipped pretzels, chocolate caramel turtles, chocolate peanut butter cups, chocolate peanut clusters, and chocolate suckers.  Lisa took home chocolate molds to make Christmas candies this December.

Next stop was Lake Gregory, a few miles away.  Gretta relaxed with a book as Kirsten, Alyssa, and Bryce rode the water slide and floated on a boogie board.  Lisa alternated between photographing the swimmers and discussing life with Gretta.

Lunch was at Tony's, a Mexican restaurant near Lake Gregory.  The food was fresh and spicy, and the serapes reminded us we were just a couple of hours from Mexico.

We met Graeme back at the artist's coop by the Lake Arrowhead dock.  He had scrounged through a couple more vacant lots for scrub oak, and had finished the last of the six picture frames for our cabin.  "These will mean more because we met the artist and know the story of the frames," Lisa and I agreed.

"Just one final treat to finish off the trip!" I suggested to Lisa, so we traipsed to the Belgian Waffle restaurant on Lake Arrowhead for Tuesday breakfast.

Then, it was one more drive down the Rim of the World Highway to Ontario airport, and my plane back to SLC.  My trip to Lake Arrowhead and the San Bernardino Mountains was all the more meaningful because my mother was offered and accepted a teaching job at a junior college in San Bernardino after she got her Ph.D at Berkeley.   She asked for the college to hold her job while she joined the Navy during World War II, but, after the war, she decided to work for a congressman in Washington, rather than return to teach in San Bernardino.  With a few different twists of fate, I might have a San Bernardino native!