Agree with all that's been written here. SoCal is a delight, ADP are fine (say hello to Mark for me). I'll be back there in September to see if I can pass an FAA IR (not got the spare year of my life, or £30k to do a JAA one).
Big Bear is great fun, but you'll need to do a "practice" into there before they'll let you do it on your own. Once I'd done that, they were happy for me to plan to go to Sedona and to Catalina.