Ladd Photos

We celebrated the boys’ birthdays by watching our first Angels game of the season. It was quite an action packed game, but the Angels lost to the Rangers, 16 to 8.

This birthday was pretty busy for Connor. He watched his brother pitch for the high school team and then he had a baseball practice. After he got home, he finally got to open his presents and eat a giant birthday cookie. Happy Birthday Dokie!

Gavin’s freshman team beat the Vista Panthers. Even though his main position is starting pitcher, he got some innings at 2nd base this game, as well as an RBI during his at bat.

Connor’s team won their last game of the season, becoming the regular season champions! They are the #1 seed going into the postseason tournament.

After the game, we grabbed our cameras and took some pictures of the animals at the Safari Park.

Connor and I took a walk down to the park with our cameras. Here are some shots I got along the way.

Connor really enjoyed walking though a Roman villa and looking at all the ancient artifacts inside. Gavin enjoyed the tour we took about the architecture of the Getty Center.

A few cell phone shots from a fun day at Magic Mountain.

The Little League community gathered at the 4S Sports Park to celebrate the end our season. Connor got awarded his trophy for being on the Majors division championship team for the regular season.

We started off our vacation in the Allegheny Mountains, touring Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece. Afterwards, we visited Ohiopyle State Park to view the Ohiopyle and Cucumber falls. On our way back to the outskirts of Pittsburgh, we drove through the corner of Maryland and had dinner in Morgantown, WV.

Today we started off learning about the founding of Pittsburgh at the Fort Pitt Museum. Then we walked through downtown to the Heinz History Center, where we learned about the more recent history of the city and western Pennsylvania.

After all that history, we walked over one of the famous yellow bridges and watched the Pirates face the Cubs. After the game, we got to see a surprise fireworks show, going off nearby for Juneteenth.

On our drive through Ohio, we stopped off at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, where we learned about the Ohio & Erie Canal that ran through the area. Then we took a small hike to see the beautiful Brandywine Falls.

We continued on north to Cleveland, where we had a pizza dinner next to Lake Erie, before finishing our day by watching the Guardians beat the Athletics.

After a drive through a bunch of farmland, we arrived at Comerica Park. We had plenty of time to explore before the game started. I think it was one of the nicest stadiums of our trip.

We had awesome seats, but they were in the blazing sun, so we ended up retreating to the shade of the nosebleeds in the 7th inning. The Tigers ended up beating the Royals.

Once the game was done, we walked around downtown Detroit and their river walk, which seemed to both be in a state of decay and rebirth. We spent the night in Port Huron, visiting Lake Huron, our second Great Lake of the trip.

The Canadians let us into their country without issue, and we were on our way to Niagara Falls. Once we got there, we looked at the falls from the Canadian side, and then crossed over Rainbow Bridge and back into the US, where Niagara Falls is a state park.

Our favorite experience was riding on the Maid of the Mist boat, which basically drove straight into Horseshoe Falls. The power of the water falling around us was unbelievable. We also hiked up to the edge of American Falls, getting drenched again, and walked around the tops of Bridal Veil and Horseshoe Falls.

We drove into Buffalo for dinner, stopping by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House on the way. After dinner, we drove around downtown Buffalo, before entering Canada again and heading to Toronto.

The view from the observation platform:

A video of us going into Horseshoe Falls:

American Falls:

From up on top of the CN Tower, which is currently the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere, the view was pretty impressive. Back on the ground it was raining, so we explored the Toronto PATH, which is over 19 miles of underground passageways with shops and restaurants covering most of downtown.

When the rain stopped, we popped back above ground to check out Yonge–Dundas Square, which is kinda like their Times Square. Then we made our way back among all the buildings to the Rogers Centre, to watch the Blue Jays play. The boys caught one of the practice balls before the game!

I taught the boys about the Jacquard Loom and how it was an inspiration for the first programmable computers. We also learned about the extreme limits of the human body, explored a rainforest and coral reef, and played with a bunch of hands-on science experiments.

Skipping rocks into Lake Ontario to finish our evening: