Erin and I were lucky enough to receive an invite from Ann and Trevor to stay with them at Ann’s family cabin in Arnold, CA over New Years. We drove up Wednesday evening and enjoyed a mellow New Years Eve at the house with Ann and Trevor, enjoying growlers of beer from Snowshoe Brewing Company. Thursday morning Ann, Erin and I drove up to Bear Valley Ski resort (about a 45 minute drive up the mountain) for a day of skiing while Trevor worked on finishing a deliverable for work (bummer!). We had a great day of skiing.

Friday was a stormy day. Ann and Trevor stayed at the cabin, recovering from colds. Erin and I drove back up the mountain with our snowshoes for a trek into the National forest to test out my new Ruger MKIII .22LR pistol that I bought back in October. It was our first opportunity to fire the gun and it was accurate and fun. We shot 140 rounds into a dead tree/cardboard box. FUN!
After our trek, we called Ani’s brother Rafi and got directions to his cabin. He built the cabin a couple summers ago on 1.1 acres near Bear Valley while working on his PhD dissertation. Similar to how I do things, Rafi found that buildings under 120sqft don’t require a permit in the area. The cabin is exactly 120 comfortable sqft. Because it was built without a permit and is therefore not “inhabitable,” he can’t get electricity or water connected. A small solar panel and melted snow solve that problem!

He was up for the week and met us out by the road. The roads back to the cabin aren’t plowed so we put our snowshoes back on and hiked in with him, where we enjoyed a couple good beers and checked the place out.