Ladd Photos

The family and I learned all about Chicago in their city’s history museum. After it closed, we walked though Lincoln park and briefly visited the zoo in the park, before it closed for the day.

We filled the time before our flight home by going for a hike in an Illinois forest. Then we visited beautiful Lake Katherine and the creatures at its nature center and gardens.

All the PNW Ladds gathered at my sister Courtney’s house to eat dinner, open presents, and watch the Seahawks lose. The camera loves my little niece Braelyn!

We walked around downtown Portland, seeing the giant Christmas tree by the old courthouse, and the Portlandia statue. In the evening, we saw the impressive holiday light displays at the Portland Zoo.

My Dad and Connor got to spend as much time at they wanted reading about every rock in the museum. I’m not sure which of them enjoyed the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks & Minerals more.

The kids had a blast playing in the snow and sledding at the White River Sno-Park near Mt Hood. I even gave sledding a try, and managed not to hurt myself.

We spent our first day on the Central Coast at Pismo’s Monarch Grove, before heading to San Luis Obispo to walk around downtown. There weren’t many butterflies left; most had moved on. The best time to see the monarchs is in November and December. Still, it was a beautiful day.

I also caught a great picture of a Great Blue Heron looking for lunch.

Luck wasn’t on our side today. We spent the afternoon fishing off of the Cayucos Pier, but the fish weren’t biting. In the evening, we watched the Cal Poly baseball home opener, which they unfortunately lost to Pepperdine.

The world was all laid out before us when we made it to the top of Murray Hill, where we could see all of San Luis Obispo, Edna Valley, and even the Pismo dunes.

The entire 5.3 mile Reservoir Canyon Loop took us about 5 hours to complete, but the view along the ridge was totally worth it.

My boys got to experience Hearst Castle for the first time, when we took them on the Grand Rooms tour.

There was a good movie we watched about Hearst before catching the bus up the mountain for our tour. The views from on top of the mountain were amazing. The boys liked the outside grounds and pools more than the inside of the main house.

Starting at a trailhead in Los Osos, we hiked over massive dunes and then along the beach on the strip of land that separates Morro Bay from the ocean.

My hope was to get to hike back across the dunes to the bay side, and take some photos across the bay of Morro Bay. But all the dunes, besides a small path we took to get to the beach, was closed off because the Snowy Plover just leaves it eggs laying around, and they are endangered.

We spent the afternoon in Moonstone Beach, walking along the boardwalk, climbing on the rocks, and looking for cool beach pebbles.

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in the car. So, I had to settle with taking pictures of our delicious dinner at Main Street Grill, which is what Firestones calls their Cambria location.

Spending a nice lazy afternoon walking around downtown San Luis Obispo.

We started off with the idea of just hiking around the Lemon Grove trail at the base of Cerro San Luis Obispo, also known as Madonna Mountain. But, the hike was going well so we decided to take another trail to the “M”, placed on the mountain by Mission High School.

After we made it up that trail, we were halfway up the mountain, so we decided to challenge ourselves to make it to the top. The view from on top of the peak was amazing.

The boys wanted to walk around Cal Poly; they love to explore where they might be attending college. Because of Covid, we pretty much had the entire place to ourselves.