After last year’s successful road trip to Santa Barbara, we got ambitious and booked four days in a cabin in Lake Arrowhead for this year’s spring break. I have thoughts.

I will be totally honest — we ended up in Lake Arrowhead by accident. I got the itch to plan a few days away in January and was doing random searches on ideas and thought, “hm, mountains? Let’s see…” That is how I found this absolutely charming cabin. We really liked the look of it, and when I actually started pricing out three days and two nights, Trin essentially said we should splurge and make it four days — a real vacation.

Fast forward to the end of March. I think I can more clearly express myself if I break this down into pros and cons. I’ll start with the pros.

The cabin was all the listing promised it would be — neat and clean with many amenities. The kitchen was well stocked with plates, utensils and cooking implements, not that I was planning on doing any cooking beyond pushing buttons. From last year’s trip, I figured that we should plan to eat breakfast at the cabin every morning and we would likely end up eating out for lunch and dinner. More on that later. So I cooked and froze a big batch of torta to bring along and was pleased to discover my kids all loved it — despite the obvious spinach throughout it. We ate the torta with muffins, croissants and danish from Costco.

The upstairs was great, as you can see from my panoramic pictures. We did not try to use the fireplace — with three boys? c’mon — but what you do not see here is that there were plenty of little games that were provided upstairs under the TV and in the downstairs bedroom, like Battleship, Jenga, several decks of cards and dominoes.

The cabin itself has so much more space than where we live, so the boys had a blast playing and running around. They probably had a little too much fun running around, but that’s how they do.

The neighborhood this cabin was in was very quiet and very close to a golf course, so someone who golfs would probably love its location. Basically, all of the Lake Arrowhead area is beautiful, and hiking enthusiasts would be in heaven. I did manage to drag the boys (including Trinity) along on an easy, kid-friendly hike, and they had a blast — although Elliott held on to my hand pretty tightly most of the way.

If you ever make your way to the Lake Arrowhead, make sure you make a detour to the Cedar Glen Malt Shop. We did, on the recommendation of a coworker, and it was such a hit with my family. The boys obviously loved the milkshakes and Trinity really enjoyed his pastrami burger.

And, I’ve got cons.

Driving out there was not pleasant. We left late, because of course we did, and so we hit afternoon traffic going east. I hate driving east in the afternoon. There is always traffic, even if it is spring break. We ended up having to stop earlier than I planned, and ended up at a Yoshinoya somewhere in Rancho Cucamonga. At least the boys ate that up with gusto!

Seeing as how I stumbled on the mountain getaway essentially by accident, I did not fully consider what we could do there. Trinity can only go hiking so much, and other activities like the Lake Arrowhead Queen and Santa’s Village cost more than we wanted to pay. There was no snow in the area (probably a good thing because Trinity and I did not want to drive in snow), and even the snow play at Snow Mountain nearby was not open until the weekend.

And, as much as the cabin was/is charming, it is in a pretty remote location, so leaving was a bit of an ordeal. There were a couple of nights we scrambled to figure out dinner because we didn’t want to drive in pitch black darkness on curvy mountain roads. We had to at one point, to get something for the cabin, and figured we would stop by the one McDonald’s in town for dinner — and it was closed. I think it was 10 p.m.

And the cabin. It is charming to be sure. But there were snafus — the first night happened to be the boys’ bath night, and I think the water heater was set on warm, so it ran out right quick. Michael and Chris ended up having to take cold showers, and it was a pretty chilly night. That was also when we discovered there were only three washcloths in the cabin between the five of us. Thank God for the washer and dryer, which is in a room with a foosball table with no ball. The next morning, we were still in bed at 8 a.m. when someone began knocking on the front door. It was workmen who said they were there for termite servicing. Fun…especially when the pounding right on the wall outside our bedroom started.

We also had a difficult time with the TV situation. There was no cable, so the ancient box TV downstairs didn’t even work, and there was only a Google Chrome stick in the upstairs TV. We didn’t like the idea of logging into someone else’s Chrome stick with our Prime or Netflix accounts, so we had thought ahead and brought a Roku stick along…but forgot the remote. It took about a day to figure out what to do and a phone call to AT&T to adjust our data plans to allow for hot spots for a workaround, but finally, we got access to our Prime and Netflix accounts.

There were other small things — cobwebs on the ceiling right over our bed, a water dispenser filter in need of replacing, a somewhat rickety patio where all the furniture was still put away for the winter, plenty of bugs, and the fact that the very picturesque claw-foot tub is on the first floor and away from all the bedrooms.

But, those are all minor details, and I kept those to myself. The boys still had a blast, and Elliott was extremely disappointed when we pulled back into our driveway. “Cabin is awesome!” He is still asking to go back.

Would I rent out a cabin/house again? Probably not. I found myself having to sweep a lot, which is so not part of my vacation itinerary. Hotel rooms may be smaller, but they do have cable and we generally don’t eat inside them — so there’s less cleaning up, plus there’s housekeeping and plenty of wash cloths. When we texted the company that rented out the cabin about the early morning termite service, all they could do was apologize — and all we could do was wait it out. So, yeah. I’m glad we got the experience, but we probably won’t rent a cabin/house again unless we have a really big group.