Monte Cristo

Rebecca and I hiked to the former mining town of Monte Cristo yesterday. It consists of abandoned buildings from when there was mining for gold and silver. It is off the Mountain Loop Highway, right where the highway ends. It is a flat hike of 8 miles round trip. It was a hot day, so we left Ruby, Rebecca's black lab, at home and only brought her little poodle, Lance, with us.

The buildings were all wood, and built at the turn of the century, so there isn't much left. The building you see in the photo was put up by the National Parks department because there used to be a road you could drive all the way to the town and it had alot of visitors. Mother Nature has washed out the road, so now you can only hike to it.

There are rusting artifacts laying around everywhere, but the main attraction is this railroad turntable that was left behind. The writeups at the camp say that they tried to remove it also, and move it to a new location, but it was unable to be removed, so they left it.


We had lunch at the townsite, but it was cut short when we belatedly discovered gross little worms crawling over the picnic table.

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.