More Hiking & A Little Remodeling for the Inside Days

One of our favorite hikes now, all times of year, is Baldy Mt. out of Eagle River - it's one of those funny ones classified as an "easy hike" by Alaska standards, but still is a pretty stiff climb - the only "easy" part is that it's relatively short - about 2 hours up and down, depending on how much time you spend walking along the ridge once you're up there!  The ridge continues over to Blacktail Rocks, which I've been wanting to go up, but we've not so far allowed enough time, and that is a more intense push up to the top.

Brian is standing on top of Baldy here, but the view along the ridge is beautiful, and it was too sunny to take a picture in the REALLY gorgeous direction of the valley!  From here, one can drop down over the edge and take a quicker but steeper return to the road, but we prefer the longer route down with a better view - and a ton of blueberries we discovered last fall - waiting for next summer for those!

Brian finished up a project he's been working on for the entrance to our kitchen, which was a hallway, across from a large pantry, which seemed like a good place for a shelf and more storage of some sort.  He'd put up a rough placeholder in the past year, and we've been trying it out to see how we best used it.  The finished product is beautiful, made of oak, with a dark wood decorative inlay.  There are baskets for storage, a place for phone plug-ins, and a shelf for his computer and business "stuff" which now doesn't have to be stored on the dining room table!

And then more hiking on an early April weekend, and I can't even remember where it was!