Ladd Photos

The Portland Ladds all gathered at my sister Courtney’s house for a Fourth of July BBQ and fireworks. All the kiddo’s had lots of fun playing with bubbles while we waited for the sun to go down.

It was a nice day to get to enjoy the tranquility of the Portland Japanese Garden. At least, it was tranquil while the kids weren’t running around causing a ruckus.

We spent our last full day in Oregon up by Astoria, where the Columbia River dumps out into the Pacific Ocean. We started off the day fishing in Coffenbury Lake at Fort Stevens State Park. Unfortunately, the fish weren’t biting this day, but the boys learned a lot about fishing being 99% waiting for something to happen.

After everyone got tired fishing, we headed over to the Fort Stevens Military Museum and the gun batteries that protected the mouth of the Columbia River. The kids had a lot of fun running around the giant concrete bunkers.

We finished up our day in the beautiful Northwest tip of Oregon by visiting the Astoria Column. It is located on top of a 600 foot tall hill in Astoria, and the column itself was an additional 125 feet high. We had breathtaking views of the Columbia River and surrounding areas, after hiking up the 164 steps to get to the top.

After taking in the views, we made sure to drive back and forth across the Astoria–Megler Bridge. It spans 4.1 miles across the Columbia River, making it the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.

It is hard to believe so much tar and fossils exist practically right in downtown LA. We all learned a lot about ice age animals and the boys enjoyed seeing all the skeletons, such as saber-tooth cats and mammoths.

We also went on a walking tour of the tar pits: learning how they formed, how animals got trapped in them, and how they were (and still are) excavated.

Having driven to Bakersfield the day before, we spent the morning visiting with my Grandma. Then we drove up to Sequoia in the afternoon, checked into the Waksachi Lodge, and at dinner there after unloading our stuff.

After dinner, we went to the Giant Forest to visit General Sherman, the largest living tree by volume. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. Once the sun went down, we headed a little further up the mountain to Wolverton, to look at the stars.

We spent most of today in Grant Grove, visiting the General Grant tree and hiking around the trails in the grove. The boys also had fun playing in the little bit of snow still on the ground.

We spent the entire day hiking, first heading up to Moro Rock, a giant dome-shaped granite formation above the Giant Forest. We stopped along the way to eat lunch by Hanging Rock, hanging out on the side of a granite cliff with some lizards.

Once we got up to Moro Rock, we still had to climb the 600 steps that were carved into the granite, to get to the very top. A first Connor acted scared, but then it was like a switch flipped, and he became a little dare devil, practically running up the steps.

After enjoying the breath-taking views and getting back down to the ground, we went on a long hike through the giant trees in Crescent Meadows. We were all completely exhausted by the time we got back to our car. All-in-all, we at least hiked 9 miles this day.

Beetle Rock is a fun place to climb around on and enjoy the views. Gavin loved coming here when he was a toddler. We even threw around the baseball a little bit.

Earlier in the day, we went for a hike in the snow. The boys had run throwing chunks of it into a creek:

It snowed more than an inch overnight! So, we decided to go have fun in the snow. We had snowball fights and built the first snowman the boys or I had ever built. I named him “Snowy McSnowface”.

After our fun in the snow, we went for a hike around Round Meadow. Then we headed to Congress Trail, visiting trees like McKinley, The President, and the House and Senate groups.

We even saw some animal tracks on the various trails we hiked down. It was freezing out, but a beautiful winter wonderland we will remember for a long time to come.

After 5 nights in Sequoia, it was time to say goodbye. We drove down to the Foothills area of the park on our way out. We had lunch by Hospital Rock and then viewed the pictographs created by the local Potwisha Native-Americans.

We stopped by the Foothills Visitor Center so the boys could turn in their Junior Ranger workbooks. The boys also begged me to take a picture of “Woody”, a stick they insisted on bringing home as a souvenir. Then it was time to hit the road for a very long drive back home to San Diego.

The first day of our epic 16-day road-trip to Texas had us driving driving from San Diego to Deming, NM.

Along the way, we stopped in Tucson, AZ to visit the Saguaro National Park. We learned a lot about the giant Saguaro cactus, which can live over 150 years, and don’t even get their first arms until they are 50-70 years old.

We spent the day at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in the beautiful mountains near Silver City, NM. It was easy to imagine daily life for the Mogollon groups of Native Americans as we walked around inside of the dwellings, way up in the cliff.

We spent over 9 hours in the car, as we drove across the rest of New Mexico and most of Texas, during the 3rd day of our trip. There isn’t much to see in south west Texas, just lots of open scrub land.

We stopped in Fort Stockton to see the “World’s Largest Roadrunner” statue, which was the only thing worth stopping for to stretch out legs.

San Antonio has a beautiful river walk in their downtown area, which we explored while walking to the Alamo.

We spent several hours learning all about the battle at the Alamo and the founding of Texas. The boys learned a ton and really enjoyed all the exhibits and historical artifacts.

After leaving the Alamo, we explored the rest of the river walk before eating at a Mexican restaurant right on the water. Then it was time to load back in the car and finish the last 3 hours of driving to Houston.