Today my boyfriend and I were talking about fun things to do in Big Bear.
Of all the fun things to do in the mountains, today I’m going to learn about feces.
When visiting the Big Bear area you could do a fifteen mike bike ride around what was once Baldwin Lake. With our severe Southern California drought the sad little lake is now a nature preserve. It’s such a shame. Baldwin is one of the only natural lakes in our San Bernardino mountains. Yes, shockingly Big Bear Lake, Lake Arrowhead and Lake Gregory are all man made! The bike ride around Baldwin Lake is really fantastic even if it’s not exactly around a lake shore these days. You pedal past so much horse property and amazing million dollar mountain homes. Plus there is little traffic in this area of the mountains.
If you don’t have a bike you could do a four mile hike off the Pacific Crest Trail ( the PCT to locals) and see lions and tigers and bears along the way.
Yes I said lions and tigers and bears. ( Oh my!)
The PCT meanders from Mexico to Canada and it is an amazing hiking trail, very well maintained. The portion that goes through our local mountains is fantastic.
If you choose to start hiking the PCT near Onyx Summit ( the highest paved road in Big Bear at 8,443 feet) you only have to hike two miles to the west to come across Predators, a awesome encampment where lions, tigers, bears, raccoons and all kinds of awesome animals live when they are not being trained for movies. You can email the guy guy who owns the property and take tours but my favorite thing to do is take my friends running here, not tell them about the bear and wait til we get close and they hear it roar to scare the shit out of them.
Speaking of shit that brings me to what I am going to do in Big Bear today.
I’m going to learn about poo.
While trail running the other day my boyfriend and I were talking about all the different animal poo you see on the trail. I mentioned to him that I know what bear and deer scat look like but if this random scat comes from cougars or bob cats, I have no idea.
Now this might sound kind of weird that I’m so interested in trail feces but if I’m running some where out on a lonely trail by myself and I start seeing a ton of cougar poo it might he a good idea to run some where else. So I should really know more about poo.
My boyfriend and I were discussing this and he had a great idea for me today. He mentioned if I go to the Big Bear Discovery Center they have a poo display.
So that’s what I’m going to do after my run this morning.
I’m going to go look at their poo.
