Big Bear adventures

We went to Big Bear Mountains in California to see the famous Big Bear solar observatory.
It is located in Big Bear lake in the San Bernardino mountains.

Big Bear lake used to be the biggest man made lake in the world until not long ago. It is really high at more than 2Km above sea level!
It is called Big Bear because many years ago an Indian hunting party led by someone called Benjamin Wilson hunted so many Grizzly bears there, that he decided to call it the Big Bear Valley.
The Grizzly bears were hunted out over the years but black bears were introduced later on and now there are many black bears living there. They are not as dangerous as the Grizzlies.

The Pacific Crest Trail crosses the Big Bear Valley, you can walk on it from Mexico to Canada a bit like the Bibbulmun track back home.
The whole area was a huge gold mining community in the previous century as gold from the mountain washed into the valley with rain. Even today there are people who are gold mining there. I wish I brought my metal detector!

The solar observatory is not open to the public since it is a research facility, we went down there to take some photos when I saw the director of the observatory near the gate (Mr Wenda Cao).
It was such a coincidence and we started to talk to him about what I was doing there.
He let us In and inside we met professor John Varsik, John took me on a private tour of the whole facility.

There are two telescopes on site, one is part of the GONG network (Global Oscillation Network Group).
The GONG network consists of 6 identical telescopes placed around the world so once the sun goes down at one site another telescope can take over.
The other telescope is called The New Solar Telescope Of Big Bear, it is one of the biggest solar telescopes in the world and is equipped with amazing optics to measure solar flares, sun spots, magnetic fields and takes patterns of the Suns behaviour, apparently lately it’s been quiet.
The telescope is owned by The New Jersey Institute of Technology and also supplies NASA with footage that they capture.

John took me upstairs to see the big telescope, the telescope is worth over $10 million dollars.
It is a big telescope which sits in a huge dome, the doors on the dome are controlled by computers, that open it when observation begins.
The telescope looks at the sun to gain its images.
Then I went down to the office and John showed me a few images of the sun that they have collected.
He then decided to take me to a place where not many people have access to it was the optical Laboratory.
There he showed me the optical mirrors and instruments.
It was such an incredible experience seeing how scientists work in the observatory, as well as all the advanced technology.

At Big Bear discovery center I met Jim, he used to be the head of the search and rescue team in the Big Bear area.

He is a retired pilot who actually crashed his plane and survived! He is now working with the Red Cross.
Jim took us around to see the area, he was great, he gave us so much interesting information and stories.

Just when we were about to leave Big Bear, two girls from the discovery and conservation centre invited me to a local camp fire and sing-a-long dedicated to the protection of the surrounding nature.
The singer Laura Tovar, who was happy to see Aussies, taught us the words for the songs and gave me her CD.
** Edited to add that Laura Tovar also ended up sending me a song she wrote, sang and recoded for my charity GOSAC (Give Our Strays A Chance).  Click the link to check it out! How amazing is this??? 
THEN I tried something for the first time..

S’MORES

It is a graham cracker with a piece of chocolate, we roasted marshmallows in the camp fire, placed it on top of the chocolate to melt it and then another graham cracker sandwiched together.
Perfect campfire activity! It was really yummy!