Overland Camping Roadtrip Blog
Travel Day 33:
Total km driven to date: 6963km
Total km walked to date: 251.36km
Big Bear Lake, CA – Big Bear Lake, CA
207km drive
1.48km on foot
What a frustrating and ridiculous day, I’m hesitant to even put it on paper. We packed up camp and headed out to find a new camping spot. Had a quick stop in Big Bear City to use the WiFi and found out that none of the Canadian teams will be coming down to Glen Helen, thats a bit of a disappointment since I was looking forward to seeing some familiar faces but its a long drive for them to just do a short course race so I understand. After that we continued around the lake and it was amazing how the scenery changed in just a few short miles. From the pine tree scrubland we were all of a sudden surrounded by large boulders of various sizes. Still the same trees but very little of the dusty scrub and mostly boulders instead, very beautiful and unique. The road as it leaves Big Bear is called Rim of the World Highway 18 and I can see why as it winds along the cliffside overlooking San Bernardino and in the distance Los Angeles (which I couldnt see due to the hazy smog hanging over). The road began to get more and more populated as we got closer to Arrowhead Lake, being only 15miles from San Bernardino this is a bedroom community of the city and there was houses on the steep hills everywhere, people too. We continued driving but saw less and less chance of finding a place to stay. We followed Hwy 18 to where it turns down into San Bernardino but decided not to head down into the city since we still had 3 days to kill, we stayed up on Hwy 138 and followed it all the way though the San Bernardino National Forest, eventually winding its way back down and into the desert again by Hesperia. This is where the story gets ridiculous, we had not found a single camping spot and were once again in the scorching desert with no good place to stay. I thought about heading to the Hammers but mid week there was likely no one around and it would be hot, I also thought of heading to Joshua Tree which was amazing but also very hot and no chance of shade so the decision was made to just go all the way back around and through Lucerne Valley and back up to Big Bear. I continued looking for a spot but found nothing good and in the end I ended up back at the exact same spot that I was at before. So it was most of the day driving and over 200km to end up exactly where I was before. I didnt even take any pictures today since the road was so tight and winding there was no good places to pull over. Chaulk that one up as a completely wasted day!