Cocktail Confessions

Well, it’s a nother year, another summer, and I’ll be fit to be damned tied if I don’t get to go on any type of vacation get-away.  It’s been at least 4 years…maybe even 5 now the last time my wife and I went anywhere exciting that was more than an hour from our house for any length of time. 

And that was the Grand Canyon, and we drove, and we were only gone a total of 5 days (maybe 6), but I think 5….maybe all the hours in the car have affected my memory on the matter.  Since then, the best we’ve done since is a 2 night stay out in Palm Springs, one overnight at the Queen Mary in Long Beach and nothing else since.

Earlier this year I tried to rally some friends together for a camping trip.  One in which I’d rent a 27′-30′ RV with a slide out and go to Mojave Narrows near Apple Valley, CA.  There seemed to be a lot of buzz and excitement at first with everybody showing an initial glimmer of interest, but as I tried to spearhead this experience….I soon came to realize that maybe my friends were ‘all-talk’ and ‘no-action’.  I love my friends and I wouldn’t trade any of them, but the whole outing seemed to come a part at the seems when no one could commit to a date.  Mind you, I was planning on an outing with 2, almost 3, months advance notice.  Plenty of time to request time off from work, maybe find a sitter or two, put aside a little cash, and have plenty of weekends available.

I went through the whole process of finding the campsite, lining up the camper, breaking it all down to some more than affordable based on the amount of people that expressed interest, and the closer I got to signing a contract on the dotted line, none of my friends were now able to commit. 

Ugh…failed attempt.

Well, here we are again, a few months later and I’m trying to regroup…..re-circle the wagons… and try again. 

In an effort to make it a simple and cost effective as possible, I found some very nice cabins up in Big Bear, CA.  For those that feared about a home on wheels, cramped conditions, single sardine like toilet/shower combination, and an unproven campsite….I went the cabin route.  We’ll have bedrooms, a full size kitchen and living room, 2 full sized showers/bathrooms, plenty of parking, an outside porch and backyard deck.  We’ll be close to town (2-3 miles) and plenty of tourist attractions.  Big Bear is also pretty close to everyone…within or less than 2 hours away from all of us.  And the price is not bad at all!!!  At $199 a night, if you break that down between 4-5 people and we go for 4 days, we’re looking at $100 a person!!

So the initial email went out today, and I’m targeting a late July or early to mid August date.  Now perhaps I’m getting myself too pysched up, but I’m hoping I (we) can pull this off.  It would be great to do, and it’d be a shame if another summer year went by and we didn’t do anything or go anywhere.

I’m about two weeks late in posting this entry (as I also happen to be behind in a lot of entries I have stored up in my head) but I’d like to share with you my experience with the 34th annual Huck Finn’s Jubilee just outside of Victorville, CA.

I first read about the festival in Westways’s magazine provided by the Auto Club of Southern California.  A small little blurb in the “getaways” section in the back referenced this festival to be chock full of bluegrass & country music, a banjo championship, period games and life demonstrations of yesteryear, arts & crafts, and of course country vittles.  The idea of eating smoked bbq ribs and roasted corn on the cob while listening to old school Americana in a picnic like setting sounded very fun and intriguing.

It’s been a while since both Monica and I have been able to get out of Orange County, or do something a bit more exciting than sitting about the house on the weekends doing various chores.  I kinda made a commitment to myself that we would try to get out and do more things this summer.  They needn’t be expensive, lavish, or far away, but I wanted to take advantage of more sunny weekends by ourselves or with friends rather than to look back at yet another summer come and gone with nothing to show for it or talk about.

Granted, Monica doesn’t really care for bluegrass music, but I know my friend Brian Liles does.  So I invited Brian and his fiancee Shea to go with us.  Luckily, Victorville is just about 85 miles from my house and we couldn’t have had better weather.  It’s been a tad cooler than usual for this time of year, and the same went for the desert where we drove to as well.

The Jubilee was held at the Mojave Narrow’s Campground, just outside Victorville at 18000 Yates Road.  Mojave Narrow’s is a very nice and impressive campground.  It’s tucked just outside a residential area and only a few miles from actual downtown Victorville, if you need to go into town for supplies.  It’s basically an open oasis of trees and rolling meadows along the side of the Mojave River.  In addition to a huge campground suited for both tents and RV’s, they have nice covered picnic patio areas, restroom facilities, along with areas for both fishing and hiking.  They also boast a good size playground with water park like attractions for the kids, and you can even rent horses by the hour for horseback riding.  I was very impressed by this place and if I ever were to go camping in the future with family or friends, I’d highly recommend this place.  It doesn’t hurt that it’s not that far from our home either.  As a personal bonus to me, there is a large railway nearby in which train enthusiasts can watch large shipping convoys roll through a few times a day.

Once we parked our vehichle and slapped on a little sunscreen, we made our way to the Jubilee entrance walking through an endless sea of organized camper trailers.  As soon as we walked in you can’t miss the large steel and aluminum outdoor concert stage set up to the right.  Here, various musical acts play throughout the Jubilee’s three day festival and people bring their own blankets and lawn chairs to set up.  There are a few areas with trees that provide shade, but the majority is uncovered so make sure you have your hat and sunscreen.  Luckily there was an on-again, off-again breeze that day so it was quite pleasant.

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On this particular day we had a chance to watch the banjo championships at around noon, but later that night The Oak Ridge Boys and various other acts would be playing.  Just west of the main stage was the vendor and craft fair where small mom and pop businesses sell various country wares, clothing, jewelry, camping gadgets, packaged foods/condiments/spices, etc.  Think of it as a small ‘county swap meet’.  Monica was able to purchase various Father’s Day gifts in the form of garlic stuffed olives and green beans from Gilroy, CA.  We tasted regional jams, mustard’s, spices and more.  There were a few people actually selling puppies as well, but as a dog lover myself, I did feel a little uneasy at this practice….who knows what the health of these puppies were, or if these were ‘puppy-mill’ owners who are not responsible breeders.  The dogs sure were cute, but with no paperwork and no guarantees of health and proper vaccinations, it seems odd to be selling animals at a campground and fair.

The one thing we did notice early on and take great umbridge too was that there were no beer vendors to be found.  This may be because this is a public campground and insurance costs or permits may be unfeasible for the jubilee, but we were all very dissapointed with this discovery.  If we would have known there was no alcohol to be sold, we most assuredly would have brought our own cooler.  At this point, I knew in the back of my head we weren’t going to be here all day long.  It was nice enough my wife agreed to come out with me, but with no adult beverages to wet her whistle, I was clearly pushing my luck.  And I don’t blame her, I think we were all hoping to have a nice craft beer, or two, or three while listening to the music.

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Speaking of beverages, I may as well discuss the food as well. In an earlier post, I reviewed Ptrains BBQ efforts on their wings and smoked pizza, but there were other vendors as well.  In addition to the roasted corn on the cob, baked beans, there was another bbq rib tent, a place that sold hot dogs, corn dogs, and brats, a few drink vendors (basically soda, lemonade’s, bottled water), and of course ice cream as well.  Some of the smells were definitely enticing.  However, that being said, I was a bit let down by the overall size and somewhat limited choices actually present.  The website for the Jubilee, while not incorrect, at least led you to believe that the ‘Vittle Village’ would be bigger than it actually was.  I was really hoping for multiple BBQ tents and a larger variety of regional foods that Mark Twain would have enjoyed, but it just wasn’t present.  Most places only took cash, which was to be expected I suppose, but maybe the website could have let you know roughly how much cash a family should bring just in case they weren’t camping and bringing their own food.

More to come in Part 2….

In about 24 hours from now I will find myself standing out in the middle of the Anza-Borrego desert playing ‘desert’ golf with my father-in-law, brother-in-law and a few other ‘men’ among ‘men’, and I have no idea how I’m going to fare.

My guess: Not well.

See, I got invited on an overnight ‘guys’ camping trip by some former marines (my father-in-law and his buddy) and their sons. This is an annual thing they conjured up a few years back where it’s an excuse to supposedly get back to nature. This really translates into getting away from the womenfolk for at least 24 hours sucking down as many libations as possible.

Initially I found myself a little pressured into this field trip. Before I even knew what was happening, my wife more or less signed me up for this as a ‘bonding’ experience with the ‘guys’. Before I could even register my own thoughts on the matter, my father-in-law was already telling me what time to be at his house. “But I have no sleeping bag…” I said. “No problem, I got you covered.” Damn… “But I have no clubs.” I then said. “Got that covered too.” Double damn…. Then my brother-in-law chimed in, “Come on, you’ll have fun.” Er……”What about my dog Frankie?” where my wife then replied, “Oh, I’m not going out of town with the girls afterall, so I can stay home and feed him.” Ughh…

It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with my father-in-law. I like him. I like him a lot. But these days with my step-daughter gone for the weekend, and the thought that my my wife was also going to be gone with her girlfriends, I was really looking forward to a nice, quiet weekend by myself at home…..to do chores, maybe do some Christmas shopping, catch up on some DVR recordings, and looking forward to working on some model train structures I am building.

But more to the point, at 39 years of age, I recognize that at times I am a pussy when it comes to the outdoors. You see, at the end of the night I like a hot shower, a comfortable bed, and the ability to use a clean bathroom in the morning when I have to make a dookie. None of these are present in the desert. No, the only thought process going through my head is that I will smell like smoke from the campfire, I won’t be able to fall asleep on uneven ground, I won’t be able to wash my hands or face, it’ll be 30 degrees overnight, and finally I’ll have to hold my crap as I cannot dig a hole out in the desert and squat above it. Now that I think about, I would never make a good contestant on Survivor, so Jeff, tear up my application.

The activities planned? Well, that another thing. There will be desert golf in which the loser lugs around the cooler of beer for everyone else…..Guess who will be getting his exercise that day? There will also be horse-shoes….a game I have never played. There will be rock-climbing….great, Why? There will be football tossing, in which I throw like a girl. And finally a campfire dinner with what my father-in-law says will require the “green bottle”….(i.e. Tanqueray gin martinis). Okay, that last part actually sounds fun and I may get on board with that, but I need a plan to participate yet not stay overnight in conditions that are less than optimal to me.

So am I a puss? Maybe I am these days, but I’ll have you know at one point I was indeed a Boy Scout. I actually made it up to being a ‘Life’ scout and spent plenty of nights in tents and sleeping bags and campfires and self-made latrines. I’ve dug plenty of holes in the ground and have gone without taking a shower or washing my hands a few days at a time. But that was then, and now I feel I’m a bit over that. No, I don’t see myself squatting in the early morning hours looking out for scorpions as I drop a duece while watching my breath at the same time…not when I know there is a clean toilet if I really want to.

So my solution? Invite my own father to go with us. That way I can tell my father-in-law it’s logistically inefficient for me to drive to his house (45 miles north) just to turn around and drive an additional 2 hours southeast. That would also mean I’m stuck and can only leave when he leaves which may prolong my perceived agony. No, by taking my own father I shave off at least 45 minutes each way of drive time, I can leave when we want to leave, and most importantly, I will have to take him home at the end of the evening thus sparing myself from having to sleep overnight. Yes, at the end of a long day of what I am sure will be plenty of embarassing laughs at my expense when it comes to the ‘guy’ things, I know I will have my hot shower, my clean bed, and my toilet the next morning where they will have none of these.

So my duty for tomorrow? I pick up my dad and his golf clubs, we go to the store and fill a cooler with ice and beer and snacks, I take my new camera and make the best out of the situation. Will it be horrible? No, I don’t think it will be. I’m sure I may even have some fun, and I know my father-in-law has been looking to do something with me for a long time (I kept making excuses for years why I can’t partcipate in his reindeer games). Plus my own father gets to go which will be good for our relationship as well and make my drive much more palatable.