As soon as Carol saw the motel room, she didn’t like it. She had picked the hotel, based on my desire to be walking distance to an Italian restaurant (any Italian restaurant) in Big Bear, and her wish to stay in a place where she wouldn’t have to jam the luggage against the door for security, or fight the mice over the breakfast bar. (Both examples having previously occurred on my watch.) Since the choice this time was Carol’s, though, I had none of the guilt, nor did I have to make one of those empty promises to do better next time that I’ve become famous for.

   I was in charge of the accommodations for our first visit to the popular all-season resort, and I selected a medieval-English themed set of cabins that were restricted to “couples only.” When I shared the details with Carol, she was convinced it was either a free-sex commune or a nudist camp.

   It was none of the above, though the leopard skin bedspread, heart-imprinted sheets and the hot tub raised her eyebrows as some kind of licentious romp in the woods looming on the horizon. (It was our first weekend away together, mind you.)

   But it was the little ceramic chipmunks placed throughout the woodsy decor of the room that worried her the most. “I think they’re cameras,” she mused. I turned them all backwards to help assuage her fears, though I wasn’t entirely convinced that she was being overdramatic.

I think it was the masonry walls, that although they sported a fresh coat of paint, they still gave off the look of a waiting room at a Social Security office or perhaps a military bunkhouse.

   Yet our current conventional room apparently buried the needle to the other extreme for my beloved Goldilocks. I think it was the masonry walls, that although they sported a fresh coat of paint, they still gave off the look of a waiting room at a Social Security office or perhaps a military bunkhouse.

   “Let’s go on a pub crawl,” Goldilocks suddenly said after about an hour of staring at the four walls. That was just right, the Baby Bear in me uttered joyfully.

   A few words about a septuagenarian pub crawl. First, there’s not that much of a gap between the metaphor and the literal, as far as the designation of “crawl” is concerned. That’s especially true if the bar seating is comfortable and the bartender affable, as was the case in our first stop. The default tendency would be to plop there for the night, since our first stop was just across the street from the Social Security Motor Court anyway.

   But a crawl is a crawl, and we sauntered on after a single glass, thereby conserving our capacities for the evening ahead, though knowing the festivities were still targeting a nine o’clock terminus. (The second rule of the septuagenarian pub crawl.)

   Whiskey Dave’s, our second stop, had the look and feel of a biker bar, complete with a billiard room and a bandstand for upscale rockabilly. But on this Tuesday night, the place was all but deserted, which gave the barkeep a chance to interact with two of the most anachronistic patrons he was likely to encounter for the week.

   We closed the pizza restaurant on our last stop, which happened to coincide with the witching hour of nine. A doggy box under my arm, I and Goldilocks wobbled our way back to the barracks, where it no longer seemed to matter that the bed was made of the same material as the walls.

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Revisit our pandemic Big Bear trip here!