Why Big Bear?
The most obvious answer is to look at the gallery of pictures below that I took on Erick’s first trip to Big Bear. It’s very beautiful place with a ton of different things to do. On our first trip up we went hiking, took a cross fit class, ate a few really good meals, went kayaking, biking, and that was all in a weekend. Living up here means all of this is basically, your back yard! As a photographer - it’s a paradise.
I was actually born in Big Bear but moved off the mountain at 2yo. I would visit for summers and every other weekend from 9yo-15yo but after that only went back up a couple times. I spent most of my time in Baldwin Lake and only ventured into the rest of Big Bear occasionally. I didn’t really have the best impression of Big Bear, at least in my memories as a child.
That all changed when my family was having a Family Reunion at a hotel in Big Bear Lake. Erick and I had already been talking about buying a house so when he saw Big Bear and then the extremely low prices on Cabins - he was sold. I also had a very different outlook on Big Bear by visiting as an adult.
I was gearing up to travelling around the country in my Van but wasn’t against having a home base, especially one that we could potentially rent out when gone. Erick was going to be able to work mostly remotely from his job in Los Angeles, which he was planning on quitting once we got settled in, with the rental hopefully being able to cover the mortgage and travel expenses. We also wanted to work on developing our own software so everything was aligning to allow both of us to do what we wanted.
So it was mostly though circumstances that led us to consider Big Bear and then the affordable cabins, beautiful environment, and not being too far away from family/ work that sealed the deal.
There really isn’t anywhere in Southern California, that you would actually want to live, that has ‘cheap’ homes, let alone anything under 200k. Little did we know that only about a year later everything was about to change. The pandemic would make Big Bear become a hot spot for both rentals and increasing cabin values to unprecedented levels.
We got really lucky, thanks universe!
09.22.2019 - This is the moment we decided to actually move to Big Bear.
