Idyll Awhile...

... is the name of the cute little wine bar in the town of Idyllwild, California. We first visited this little mountain town when we were in Palm Desert back in December 2011. While sipping tequila at a bar, a local, who had lived there for many years, told us about his home town and why we must take a trip up the mountain. Idyllwild is nestled in the San Jacinto mountains and is about an hour away from my parents place...but the distance is so much more when talking about the town vibe. Where Palm Desert is a sea of concrete and golf courses, Idyllwild is a panorama of mountains, pine and streets angling every which way.

We were excited to use our new Thousand Trails membership here and basically stayed for free for four nights in Pine Cove, an even tinier town just above Idyllwild. During "the season" getting a spot in this campground can be difficult, but just getting INTO a spot in this campground can be a challenge, even for the seasoned rver. The entire campground is built into the mountain and the roads are all "cattywhompis" (park ranger's word!) with sites at odd angles everywhere you look. Trying to follow their "map" was impossible and after getting terribly lost driving around in the Subie, looking for a site, I signaled to Bill to just park Bebe and we could drive around together. Thankfully, he being the navigator and all, was able to make a little more sense of the map and we finally found a site that we thought we could get into. Once there we were able to relax a bit and really enjoy the peace and quiet of a pretty empty campground in the warm fall sunshine.

We love mountain towns and our first visit brought good food, fine wine and beers, and the meeting of very good people. One couple, that we really hit if off with, was going to come down and visit us in Slab City but their newly adopted dog ended up in the hospital and the trip was cancelled, somehow over the last 9 months I lost their contact information and all of the emails we sent back and forth. This is soooo not like me - I am pretty diligent about keeping track of things..but even the picture that I had on our blog from that visit came up blank, it was pretty weird. We remembered a few things about them, but not their names. We were only in town for 4 days so we wanted to see if we could track down these folks asap. Once we were settled we jumped in the car and headed back to the Idyll Awhile wine bar where we first met them hoping that in this small town someone would recognize them with the few facts we remembered. We sit down at the bar and I have a glass of wine while Bill manages to impress the owner by ordering the best beer they have out of about 50 in their case - he's a professional, what can I tell you. We tell the bartender our tale of woe...these great people, we don't know their names, yada yada yada and he tells us their name and hands us her business card with all of her contact info on it. You just HAVE TO love small towns!! I immediately sent her a text and an email and within minutes I had a reply and we were making plans for drinks and dinner on Friday! Unfortunately the hubby was out of town and didn't get back early enough for us to see him but we went to our favorite restaurant up there, Cafe Aroma, and had a great time.

Our four days passed quickly, as they always seem to, and I don't think we did much of anything except walk around the town and investigate the county park for future camping, but this much I know....we will be back!