An Escape From L.A. To The Southern California Mountains
One of the best – and quite frankly, endlessly amazing – things about living in Los Angeles is the variety of landscapes in the area.
I mean, one minute you’re at the beach and the next you’re in a friend’s convertible twisting up a curvy mountain road rising from the ground floor of planet Earth as if on a twirling elevator. Then after a few more switchbacks you’re in Lake Arrowhead!
You could not find a more different setting from Los Angeles than the mountains that stand behind it. Lake Arrowhead has an elevation of 5,174 feet, which is not particularly imposing as far as mountains go – Mammoth, for example, is 7,800 feet and the Rockies are 14,400 – but that’s not the point.
The fact it’s here, a mere hour and a half from the smog and traffic of downtown L.A., and the clogged streets of Hollywood, is what’s amazing to me.
Lake Arrowhead has tall pine trees, crisp and fresh air and a small lake that’s ideal for pontoon and slow ski boats towing skiers that seem as if they are posing for one of those travel postcards of the 1960s.
It’s been the scene of several movies, particularly in the ’20s and ’50s. Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Jill St. John (a Bond girl, no less) and dozens of more celebrities have been here filming movies. Raquel Welsh made her film debut at Lake Arrowhead; no doubt the site of her caused a quite few boat captains to veer off course!
My friend has a cabin in Arrowhead, and he invites me up to it a time or two during the summer. This trip, I was riding with him, so I took the “no decisions” approach, meaning I was going wherever he was taking me because I knew it would be good and I knew it would be fun.
And boy, was I right!
Before we got to the tall pines of Arrowhead, we made a couple of stops along the way. One was Heroes brewpub in downtown Riverside. My friend likes to pull in there to fill up growlers of Heroes’ own beer, brewed right behind the bar (he prefers the Red Tractor, me the Boxcar Blonde).
We also got a couple beers to have with lunch and these people don’t fool around when it comes to their beers. They come in Oktoberfest-sized 1-liter glass mugs!
Turns out you need that much beer because the food portions are so big you’re going to be there a while eating it. I had the Al Capone sandwich, by the way, which featured homemade meatballs that were so awesome they had me singing “Santa Lucia.”
The next stop was at the base of Highway 18 so my friend could show me a plaque and a natural stone formation in the shape of an arrow from which Lake Arrowhead gets its name.
After we circled up Highway 18 – huge drops off the right side certainly keep one’s attention at a peak – we pulled down a side road where my friend shut off the ignition. We then walked up to a back porch with a sign that read “Park At Your Own Risk,” which must have explained why my friend parked across the street.
Inside was a dusty, smoky old bar that made me feel as if I was on a ranch in the middle of Wyoming. The veteran bartender sported a ponytail and a sign above the bar announced his name as “Heyou.” Really, as in “hey you, get me a beer!”
Heyou quietly poured us a couple of drafts from the tap and we sipped them along with a few Arrrowhead locals who wandered inside on this bright and sunny midweek afternoon.
Eventually we moved on, had dinner under the stars overlooking the lake at my friend’s place, then took out on a short walk. My friend is very social and we did some “deck hopping” as I named it, knocking on his neighbor’s doors and having drinks on their decks.
On my previous visits, the friend had taken me “dock hopping,” and that is going on his pontoon boat from dock to dock on the lake. This was almost as enjoyable.
The next day, we got on the pontoon boat, witnessed a helicopter drain water from the lake to help put out a fire that was raging a few miles away, and settled into the patient pace that is Arrowhead.
You need a friend with a boat here, too, because this is a private lake; while there’s a European-style village and a tour boat for tourists, full access to the lake is limited to property owners.
I returned to Los Angeles completely refreshed and relaxed. And that’s saying something coming from someone who lives at the beach.
It’s amazing what Los Angeles has to offer, especially when you get just outside of L.A.
And have a good friend to show it to you.
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