Lake Serene and Garage work

Rebecca and I both had Friday off as a Boeing 9/80's day. We decided to try out a trail that was usually overly popular on the weekends, but would be empty on a Friday when normal people would at work. Our original trail selection was Blanca Lake. But we were stymied by Mother Nature. The road was closed because the river had decided to reroute itself.



So, we switched plans to go to Lake Serene, which was just a few miles down the main road (Highway 2). It was a slightly overcast day, which kept the temperature nice for a tough hike. Along the way, there is a short side trail to Bridal Falls. At the bottom, there are several huge boulders to lounge upon.



Eventually you cross over the water that is coming over the water fall. Even on a Friday, there were several people on the trail. It wasn't too crowded, but it wasn't empty either.



Here Rebecca is playing Zorro with my hiking stick.



You get pretty high up near the end of the trail, and get some great views of the North Cascades.



Here is Lake Serene



Here is a log jam at the waterfall that exits the lake, and a nice flower along the way.




Also this weekend, my neighbor Chris helped me pour a new floor in my garage. We used 38 bags of ready mix concrete (each bag was 60 lbs). Here are a couple of pictures showing the before and after.






Here is the massive sunflower growing my backyard.

Blue Angels and garage reconstruction

The Blue Angels are in Seattle this weekend, putting on a show for three days. They were here yesterday (Friday), today and tomorrow. Rebecca, Rick and myself rode down to watch them from the bridge deck for I-90. I took lots of pictures, but didn't have my camera with the super zoom, so they are a little fuzzy. It was a great day for a bike ride and an airshow as you can see from the pictures.

The show is part of "SeaFair", the summer long celebration in Seattle that peaks late July, early August with the hydroplane races and the Blue Angels. I have never actually gone to see the hydros, but I hear it is fun. I do try to ride down and see the Blue Angels every year. I love all the noise as they fly over. After the show, we rode over to John and Liz's to join their annual BBQ.







I also have pictures showing the work I am doing on my garage. The first photos is the outside, looking in with all the tools of destruction/construction laying around. The cement mixer is my neighbors. The other photos show the inside corner where I was tearing away the top layer to see what is actually supporting the roof. It turns out the answer is "not much". The last pictures show the form boards I have put up to guide the new cement we will be pouring next weekend (hopefully).







The faint blue line in the last photo shows how much the cement slab has settled at an angle over time (about 8 inches in the corner). Luckily the garage has settled much worse than my house. The plan is to pour a new slab on top of the old slab, anchoring to the old and the new together by driving sticks of re-bar through holes drilled in the old concrete (see the holes with the concrete dust laying around them in the photo). Once the new slab is set up, I will building a new, stronger back wall that supports the roof much better, then remove the old wall. I had to break out a section of the old floor so that the new concrete will be at least a couple inches thick the whole way, so where it used to slope up and meet the old floor, I knocked out a few inches.