more cabinets

Last Sunday I spent most of the day creating the front face for the slider cabinet for the bathroom. I am not a very efficient cabinet maker, I really should keep the day job. There is a better way to do this all, hire someone. But, it was a great day out, the door came out nice and I still have all my fingers.

Here is the picture of the cabinet facing that I built up. It is made out of 8 pieces of wood, 6 to create the frame and 2 flat panels that slide into the frame. The reason the face is just propped up against the wall is that I need to disassemble everything again so I can paint it.























This close up shows the groove I cut in the top and bottom parts of the frame, which the flat panel slides into, and the tongues I create in the vertical pieces that also fit into the groove. There are highbrow, technical cabinet type woodworking terms for these bits, but I am writing this early in the morning and my brain isn't working.























It is Saturday morning as I write this, and outside is another beautiful Seattle summer day developing. Today I am going to try and finish up the other cabinet that I have been working on. This cabinet is just around the corner from the bathroom. Here is the bare shell, and maybe by the end of the day I will have a picture of some progress.























On another subject, here is a great website that I found a couple weeks ago. Checking in daily has been consistently a rewarding experience. I think the author of the website has a great eye for interesting links on the web....
http://lifehacker.com/

One hike, three lakes

I went hiking yesterday up in the Alpine Lakes area on Saturday. It is the same area with Snow Lake, where I was in last weekend. My original plan was to hike to Pratt Lake, but on the trail there was a another hiker that suggested that I continue on for 15 more minutes to the next lake.

The Alpine Lakes area is very aptly named because there are many, many lakes in the area, and a great network of trails connecting all of them. When getting the pictures ready for putting in this post, I realized there isn't much different between them. I was having difficulty recognizing which photos were from yesterday. But there is definitely differences in the trails leading to them. Snow Lake from last weekend is from the "Hikes with Children" trails book, but I don't know many children that would enjoy the death march it would become for them. The Snow Lake trail starts off nice and easy, but suddenly you come to the section where you gain all the elevation. The trip is worth it, Snow Lake is stunning.

But, because Snow Lake is great, it is a very popular trail. Pratt Lake is in the same area, but is less popular. I was worried that hiking on the weekend, with great weather it would be packed, but it turned out I only saw about 10 people on the trail.

Here are the pictures. This first one is looking out onto Olallie Lake from a view point along the trail. If you look closely, Mount Rainier is trying to hide behind a pine tree, but it is a little like a very large person trying to hide behind a telephone pole. The tree in the right foreground shows that Fall is just around the corner, the leaves are starting to shows signs of orange.

























I didn't hike to Olallie Lake today, I think I did last year. They all start blurring together after a while. The view from above was nice.

This next picture is of Pratt Lake. This is taken at the north end of the lake, looking south. Along the trail I bumped into a guy hiking up to do some camping and fishing. Since he could tell by my backpack that I was a day hiker, he wasn't worried about competition for the best tent site and biggest fish. He told me about the much nicer lake that is 15 minutes beyond Pratt. Pratt is nice, but it is surrounded by steep inclines, and you can only get to the water at this one spot. And the area is only about 30 feet wide, it gets somewhat trampled.
























Continuing along the trail past Pratt Lake, you arrive at Lower Tuscohatchie Lake. The trail comes out of the trees, up over a small incline where you hear a waterfall and then suddenly you see this lake in front of you. It was definitely worth the extra trip. I hung out here and had my lunch on a big, flat rock in the sunshine and relaxed. There were several big dragonflies and I wanted to capture them in a photo, but it would have been a frustrating excercise, so I decided to lay back and watch them instead.