Dan's 40th Birthday Big Bear Weekend- Day One

Originally, we wanted to celebrate Dan's 40th in Hawaii, but due to lack of vacation time, we had to pick something a bit more local. Dan loves Big Bear, so we booked up a three day weekend with tons of activities.

Unlike Lake Arrowhead, which has the very lovely Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa, we couldn't immediately pin-point the nicest resort in Big Bear. Although filled with beautiful homes and amazing restaurants, Big Bear seems to have a lack of luxury resorts. After many hours of internet research and recommendations from friends, we picked the NorthWoods Resort as our home for the weekend.

We were initially put off by the lack of a lake view, but what NorthWoods lacks in view, it makes up for in proximity to the village. This is the place to stay if you want the ability to walk to great restaurants and more importantly drink without having to worry about choosing a designated driver! The walk-ability factor was huge to our enjoyment of the weekend.

The decor in the hotel is rustic, cozy and cute. I had an great initial impression with the lobby and while waiting to check-in, I overheard a very enthusiastic front desk clerk giving out tips to another couple regarding local hiking trails. The staff was wonderful at NorthWoods, quick to make suggestions and generally ready to see that our needs were met.

We arrived very early on a Saturday morning and the early check-in fee was only ten dollars. Most things in Big Bear are far less expensive than in Los Angeles, so we spent the whole weekend suffering from reverse sticker shock.

Here are some of my NorthWoods first impression pictures.

Our room had cute woodsy decor touches, like towel racks that looked like tree branches. As far as hotels go it fit our basic needs. The room had standard amenities (coffee/hairdryer/iron/nice toiletries) and was roomy.

NorthWoods definitely had some negatives. The walls were paper-thin. We heard every bit of the conversations going on in the rooms surrounding us. The bed wasn't very comfortable, it was springy. The television wasn't in widescreen and as we were watching the news, the newscaster was often only on half on the screen. It was actually kind of funny. The biggest let-down was the pool, which was small and located in the parking lot. We didn't even bother to use it.

As I previously mentioned, NorthWoods' great location is what makes this resort a stand-out. We will likely return here to take advantage of its proximity. Minutes after dumping our luggage off in our room, we walked to the marina for our pontoon boat rental.

In summer, the marina books up their rental equipment very quickly. We reserved our two-hour pontoon boat ride three weeks in advance, but all of the people that were trying to book same-day or same-weekend rentals, were being told that they were out of luck. Book early!

As part of their contribution to Dan's birthday weekend, his parents paid for the boat trip. Thanks Jan and Dave! We had gone on a shorter pontoon trip when they visited us last September and it was something that Dan had wanted to do again.

I had packed a picnic for the boat, but unfortunately I had forgotten it in the car. The marina has a small selection of snacks, so we bought a bag of M&M's and bottled water.

We saw a funny little boat in the marina. It was so low in the water, that it looked like it was sinking.

Also near the marina was the Action Aqua Flight. It's a new thing that the Action Tour Company is offering this summer. It looked potentially fun, but also really hard to do. I'm not sure that I would want to get into the icy lake water to try it out!

Action Aqua Flight

It was an overcast, chilly morning on the lake. We found a small patch of sun on one side of the lake and joined a ton of other boats that were also taking advantage of the warmth.

Friday night had been a late evening spent kicking off Dan's birthday weekend with a few friends and we were running on empty having only gotten a fews hours of sleep before driving up the mountain. We parked the boat in the sun and took a much needed nap.

Dan took this beautiful panorama picture of the lake.

Sooner than we would have liked, our two hour rental was nearly finished and we had to head back towards the marina, through the cold part of the lake. We saw the Time Bandit pirate ship, something that we want to do on our next Big Bear trip!

For dinner, we walked to the village and found an amazing Mexican restaurant called El Jacalito Grill. The place was packed, but we managed to snag a high-top in the bar. I previously mentioned the stick-shock in Big Bear for those of us visiting from Los Angeles. El Jacalito was ridiculously inexpensive. We each had a large Coronarita (for the uninitiated- bottles of Corona in a Margarita).

Since it's his birthday, Dan is allowed to steal my drink.

We shared our main course, which was an enormous shredded beef burrito. The burritos are bigger than the ones at Chipolte. We left full and happy that we had the foresight to share. El Jacalito also has a salsa bar to accompany the tortilla chips, which was a fun touch. The total for our bill was around twenty dollars. Amazing!

Another Big Bear Village value is the cinema. It's a small four screen theater and anyone who lives in a big city will feel like this is a flash back to the eighties. It's older. That being said, we saw The Wolverine on opening weekend during peak movie times and it was only eight dollars a ticket. That's cheaper than the matinee at our local theaters. We joked (half-joked) about driving up to Big Bear just to spend a day watching movies to save money on our cinema habit. What did I think of The Wolverine? Stay tuned for a review coming at the end of the week.

With the exception of bars, Big Bear is a town that shuts down early. It was eerily quiet walking back to our hotel after the movie, around nine-thirty. We ended our night with Irish Coffees at the bar in NorthWoods, Stillwells.

Stillwells is a great addition to NorthWoods. It fits in with the rustic decor and the bar had a warm vibe. I really liked the bartender, who was from England and was chatting with us. NorthWoods really had great staff, everyone from check-in to cleaning staff to the bartenders, were very friendly. Again, we marveled at the low drink prices.

We called it an early night and headed to bed to wake up for Dan's Birthday and morning Segway tour!

Orange County Fair 2013

On Saturday, I introduced Dan to one of my favorite summer traditions, the fair. Although smaller, I actually prefer the Orange County Fair to the Los Angeles County Fair. It feels more manageable and has a better layout. Although we didn't catch a concert, I love the Pacific Amphitheater venue.

Going to the fair reminds me of my mom. My mom loved going to the fair. More specifically, she loved to eat at the fair. My mom wasn't someone who found much enjoyment in food. 364 days of the year, she barely ate. It was as if she was saving up to turn into a total glutton for one day at the fair. My rail thin mom became a bottomless pit. You've never seen anyone be able to consume so much cotton candy. It still boggles my mind. Our yearly trips to the fair are one of my fondest memories of my mom.

Dan and I woke up extra early on Saturday to take advantage of the early-bird weekend offer. The OC Fair has a promotion that from ten-eleven am on weekends, admission is only three dollars. This is a savings of eight dollars a ticket...sixteen dollars saved to spend on junk food! A lot of other people had a similar idea and the fair was packed within the opening hour.

I have years of experience working at a major theme park, however, that did not help me make wise decisions when navigating the fair. Like total novices, we stopped first at the exhibits closest to the entrance gates.

The first thing that we checked out was the Millennium Barn. One of my favorite pictures is the resting ow framed by the barn doors.

I'm a sucker for anything that looks like a circus side-show and was immediately drawn to Dr. Entomo's Palace of Exotic Wonders! The Palace was an educational entomology exhibit. It's tiny and they only let a small number of people in the building at a time. It's worth doing, if there is no line or if you're really into entomology. I like the attention grabbing creativity that pulled us over to the exhibit.

We kicked off our food binge with chocolate covered bacon for breakfast. It's not as good as one might imagine (or maybe you think it sounds disgusting) and we threw a majority of it away. The biggest problem is it was frozen solid and actually felt like it hurt my teeth to eat. Not fun.

Since the chocolate covered bacon wasn't up to our breakfast standards, we naturally turned to fresh fried potato chips dipped in cheese for our second course.

Third course was amazing truffles that were being sold near the prize winning cake exhibit.

After breakfast, we decided that a burger would be perfect for lunch. The fair grounds has a cafe right in the middle, which is a great spot if you want to escape the crowd. We ate inside, where we found plenty of tables. The prices were on par with the rest of the fair food, which is to say, over-priced. However, it's not like you go to a fair expecting great bargains on junk food! Unfortunately, the burger came with more potato chips.

Dan marveled at the sheer volume of BBQ meat being sold at the fair. He pointed out a disappointment in that although there is a lot of food, it's very repetitive throughout the event. For example, Juicy's Texas BBQ seems to have a monopoly. They seemed to be every other stall. Where's the variety?

I was too busy eating to take a picture of my last and best course, a caramel apple chopped up and served in a cup. This is my favorite fair food tradition. I know that I can make it at home and I often do, but there is something about eating it at the fair that makes it special.

Speaking of eating, Overeaters Anonymous had a booth right in the middle of all of the food vendors. They were not so popular!

Stuck in among the food and with the religious and political groups. Nice.

One of the coolest things at the OC Fair was a giant Sandcastle!

I really enjoy the award winning crafts, especially the cakes.

We saw quilts, handmade cards, model houses...

Dan played around on flight simulator with a model airplane club.

He also found a new potential hobby in Woodworking. The people at the Orange County Woodworkers Association couldn't have been nicer or more helpful in answering Dan's questions. They had some really cool wood crafts on display.

We took a look at the prize winning flowers, fruits and vegetables. The name Jeremy is intentionally etched into the pumpkin as a tribute to a boy who had passed away.

A trip to the fair would not be complete without a few rides. We bought twenty dollars worth of tickets, which got us on exactly two rides.

This is our ride pass. The ride operator scans a barcode to keep track of the tickets and it is reload-able.

The first ride was a skyway trip across the fair giving us a great view of the entire event.

Our second ride was on the giant Ferris Wheel. It was an unusually cold, gloomy day for July and it began to sprinkle.

Being a former theme park employee, I'm always interested in ride safety.

And I'm not sure how appropriate this game is for a family event.

I saved the best for last...the animals! My favorite part of any fair is the live stock. We saw this adorable pig drinking a bottle of water.

And this calf getting a bath.

But the best thing that we saw was a pen full of curious goats...

The goats were utterly fascinated by the enormous turkey that was being walked by their pen. We were fascinated too!

Turkey going for a stroll..this is what happens at the fair!

We saw many beautiful animals. I didn't get a picture, but one of my favorite things was a little boy who was taking a nap on his pig's belly. They were just cuddled up together.

If you want to see the All Alaskan Pig Races ( and you should) make sure to arrive early for a good seat in the grandstands. We showed up just minutes prior to the races and had a standing room only/partially blocked view. The races are a lot of fun and the announcers really "ham" it up with getting the audience prepped and showing off the pigs. The actual race is a 'blink and you'll miss it" thing. The track is short and the pigs are very eager to run back in their pens for a treat. It's very adorable though and is a must see fair activity.

Some of the sadder animals at the fair are in the freak show section. These include the giant steer and giant horse. Each costs a dollar to go inside of a tent, where the animal is tied up in a too small pen. The animals are quite impressive and live up to the hype, but they seem so sad, especially in contrast to the other fair animals, that I left the tents feeling terrible for having supported the business. It's not the first time that I have paid to look at the animals, but it's the first time that I left feeling guilty about it. Never again.

Our trip to the OC Fair was a big success. We left after about five hours of fair fun with bellies full of junk food. As we were pulling out of the dirt parking lot, it started to pour rain. Our timing was impeccable.

Las Vegas, June 2013- National Geographic: 50 Greatest Photographs

I love National Geographic. My entire childhood the latest issue of the magazine sat on our coffee table on top of our two giant atlases, one of North America and one of the World. My mom loved geography.

Outside of briefly living in Germany and Virginia while my father was in the military, my mom didn't do a lot of traveling. Our family vacation was always to Maui. Not a bad family vacation destination, but it grew old over the years. My mom loved learning about the world and I always felt like she wished that she had seen more of it. She passed her love of the world along to me.

The monthly arrival of National Geographic was always an exciting mail day. When I was in elementary school, she subscribed to National Geographic World (in addition to National Geographic) a magazine for kids. One year, they ran a geography quiz contest with new questions in the magazine every month. My mom helped me discover the answers on our atlases. The contested ended up being a prize raffle for all of the kids who had the correct answers and although I didn't win, my name was put on a pull-out map in the magazine featuring all of kids that had the correct answers. One of my best friends also had his name on the map! Good memories.

When I think of National Geographic, I think of my mom and exploring amazing things with her from our couch. I was really excited to discover that the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas was hosting a National Geographic photography exhibit. The exhibit showcases what editors have picked as the fifty best or more iconic photographs.

We bought discount tickets to the exhibition at the Tix4Tonight booth in the Town Square Mall. The regular admission price is eighteen a ticket. The exhibit is amazing and wonderful, but not worth a full price admission.

Our tickets to National Geographic's 50 greatest Photos — Our tickets to *National Geographic's 50 greatest Photos*

We arrived late on a Friday, mid-afternoon and the exhibition was very quiet. We never had to wait to view a photo. The exhibition is located across from the Venetian Guest Check-In area, tucked away in a corner and a bit hard to locate. It has a small gift shop, which also serves as the entry to the exhibition.

The exhibition takes place in one big room, which is broken up by dividing walls in the center. The pictures are equally spaced throughout the walls with a small description of each photographed placed below or to the side of the picture.

Lighting is a problem. The lighting in the gallery is all fixed to enhance the photograph, which is great, however, in more than one case, it was too dark to read the information about the photograph. I felt like I was cheated on the experience. They should fix the lighting or hand out mini flashlights. Bring a mini flashlight, trust me.

The photographs are all very amazing and some are quite emotional. One that really caught me off guard was a photograph of a child of farmers whose sheep had been killed by a car. The kid is completely wreck with grief. I felt gutted looking at it.

I loved a picture of mountain climbers in a snow storm. They each are wearing a particular bright color, so that they can be easily identified during climbs. The picture showed the guys waiting out a severe storm. They are sitting in the snow and brilliant patches of vibrant pinks, oranges and blues on their outfits are peaking through the thick white.

There was a stomach churning picture of a dead bird and the contents of it's stomach. The bird had consumed all kinds of trash. The quantity of what was in this animal's stomach is mind boggling. They should do an anti-litter advertising campaign with this picture. It was very affecting.

One of my all time favorite photographs was included in the exhibition. It's a photograph of a chimpanzee touching Dr. Jane Goodall's hair. It's a beautiful moment that a photographer happened to capture.

The exhibition included several videos highlighting certain photographs and the photographers that captured the shot. This was the most interesting component of the exhibition.

In particular, I liked hearing the backstory behind a picture of farmers in Australia experiencing a drought. The picture was of a farmer and his children. The farmer was excited to check his fields after they had a rain storm. He was optimistic heading out, but when they arrived at the fields the area was still dry and damaged. The farmer was keeping strong for his two children, ran out around the truck, where the photographer was snapping pictures. She managed to get a candid shot with amazing framing using the truck's mirror. The video component really highlighted the story behind the picture.

As great as the photographs are, I wish that there had been more about the photographers. I find that the story behind the picture is often more interesting that the actual photograph. I wanted more of the journalism and not just the art.

We spent about an hour in the exhibition. I enjoyed viewing the incredible photographs, but was left feeling like the experience was lacking. It was almost as if they just threw the photographs up on the wall, without giving enough attention to the meaning behind the photos or to the photographers. Not terrible, just lacking. It's worth the trip if you can get discount tickets.

Official Information on 50 Greatest Photographs Exhibition