We followed up our epic Vegas weekend with another mini vacation a few days later. We kicked off the second weekend trip by heading to Lake Arrowhead. Dan and I had spent his birthday weekend in Arrowhead back in July and loved it so much, that we knew his parents had to experience it. I always find it amazing that in a short drive, you can be in a completely different world, surrounded by pine trees, sparkling blue water and clean air. It is such a beautiful place. After fueling up at Waffle Works, we bought tickets for a tour of the lake aboard the Arrowhead Queen. Here are the tickets, sixteen a piece for adults. When we came in July, most of the tours were sold out and this boat was full, clearly a popular Lake Arrowhead attraction.

Arrowhead Queen tickets.

Here are a few pictures from the dock.

The gate to the boat dock.

The majestic Arrowhead Queen.

It looks small in the picture, but it holds about sixty people. We were the first to board and decided to sit at the very back, which has a bench seat on a raised platform. This seemed like the ideal spot, but once we were on out on the lake, we realized that we had the worst seats as far as viewing out the side windows. We had a great view of what was behind the boat, but a limited view of everything else. Don't sit in the back. We had to bend down to get good pictures out of the side windows.

The view from the back window.

Here is what we saw once we got going.

another view out the back.

Here is the interior view from our seats.

A full boat.

We had a full boat, mostly with a senior group on a day trip. We had two ladies who boarded carrying a large crock-pot, which was just plain weird.

Our captain and tour guide looked like a portly Steve Martin and unfortunately, his voice was the love-child of Huell Howser and Gilbert Gottfried.

Our guide.

With the exception of his unusual and grating voice, he was a decent tour guide. He gave us the History of the lake, listed many statistics and pointed out celebrity homes. It was a very informative fifty minute ride. I enjoyed getting an close-up view of many gorgeous homes.

Lake front property.

I was also excited to see (from a distance) UCLA'S Bruin Woods. I spent three great weekends here during high school for a writing workshop. I have many wonderful memories at the place. A lot of mortifying, angst-ridden poetry was written here.

Bruin Woods.

We found this guy waiting for us at the dock. This duck clearly hit the jackpot.

coffee?

If you've read my other posts, you know how much I love ducks. I can't just post one cute duck picture. I liked the bag of duck food and took a picture of it.

Love it!

And promptly dumped all of the contents in the lake. It was my second bag. I could probably spend an entire day feeding the ducks and never get bored.

DUCKS!!!

My final picture comes from the store where we bought the boat tickets. It doesn't have to do with anything else in the post, I just liked it.

Rats!