Ladd Photos

Connor and I visited the animals at the Safari Park while practicing our photography skills.

This museum was much larger than we expected. They had diagrams and dollhouses, metal airplanes, model ships, and more little engines than you could imagine existed. The amount of time and skill it must have took to craft such intricate creations is amazing.

Connor is a big man on campus at Oak Valley Middle School and Gavin is an upperclassman at Del Norte High School.

We had never explored this museum before, which was way out in East County San Diego. The museum was filled with lots of interesting minerals, fossils, shells, and animal specimins. There was a large collection of native artifacts from many different groups of peoples throughout the Americas.

After getting our fill of the museum, we went next door to the Water Conservation Garden where we wandered around and explored the grounds.

Day two of the tournament in Perris. Gavin started off pitching a gem in the first game. Then, in the bottom of the 1st, while up to bat, he took a fastball right off the elbow, knocking him out of the game.

A trip to the ER and a few x-rays later, his elbow wasn’t broken, just severely traumatized. He will be wearing a sling for a week, but should make a full recovery.

Gavin is playing for Crush again this summer. These are a few shots from the first day of a two day tournament in Perris, CA.

Our flight home to San Diego had a long layover in Las Vegas, so we had time to leave the airport and explore the Strip.

No trip to Minneapolis is complete without a visit to the largest mall in the United States. It had every store you could ever imagine, and small theme park in the middle.

We spent most of the day walking around downtown Minneapolis, hopping between buildings via the sky bridges and exploring the architecture.

In the evening, we visited our 20th MLB stadium, watching the Twins beat the Tigers at Target Field. We happened to catch Brooks Lee’s MLB debut, who is the son of the Cal Poly head baseball coach. After the game, we enjoyed an awesome fireworks show.

Our family’s multi-year quest to find a moose was finally successful! The zoo also has a cool elevated walkway, a large collection of goats, and many other interesting animals. We finished our time at the zoo by having the boys take a ride on a camel, which was a first for both of them.

After dinner, we went to take a look at the Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul.

We started off our day wandering around the Wisconsin State Capitol, including taking in the nice view of Lake Monona from the roof. Then we walked down to nearby Monona Terrace, which is a community and convention center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In a suburb outside of Madison, we visited the National Mustard Museum, which is home to the world’s largest collection of mustards and mustard memorabilia. It was an unique experience and we even got to sample several very interesting mustards.

Further along the road to Minnesota, we stopped at Carson Park in Eau Claire, which is home to the baseball stadium that Hank Aaron make his professional baseball debut, playing for the Eau Claire Bears.

We watched the Brewers beat the Cubs at American Family Field, which is the 19th MLB stadium we have visited. The entire parking lot was filled with tailgaters before the game, which I have never seen at a baseball game. The boys got to run the bases after the game.

For our last day in Chicago, we visited the animals at Lincoln Park Zoo, before driving up to Milwaukee. It was just the right size to spend a nice afternoon exploring.

We saw a good assortment of birds, reptiles, primates, and larger African animals such as rhinos, giraffes, and zebras. The seals liked to entertain the visitors, blowing bubbles under the water and then popping up and spitting out water. Connor met a turtle who liked to have his photo taken, which he named “Turtlelini”.

This day of our trip we spent in another massive museum: The Field. We covered a massive breadth of topics as we worked our way through the building.

We started off learning about creatures that feed on the blood of others. Then we explored Unseen Oceans, all about the deep sea and how it is explored.

Next we explored ancient Egypt, walking through a reconstructed tomb complete with mummies, which kinda creep me out. There were many other Egyptian artifacts, including a wooden boat that sailed on the Nile river.

Our education shifted to animals, where we worked our way through an exhibit the shank you down to the size on an insect and then you walked through the ground, learning about all the creatures that live there. In the next exhibit, we learned all about the bio-mechanics of animals.

We finished our day in an massive exhibit called Evolving Planet, which walked you through all 4.5 million years of Earth’s history, era by era, in great detail. In the dinosaur era, we got to view Sue, the famous T-Rex skeleton.

For dinner, we had some good Greek food, and the continued our culinary tour with dessert from another Chicago icon: Garrett Popcorn.

A short morning walk brought us to Cloud Gate, more commonly known as “The Bean”, which is an iconic piece of Chicago that was fun to photograph. We also viewed Crown Fountain, with its giant video faces, and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, designed by Frank Gehry.

Then we headed across a sky bridge to spend the rest of the day in the massive Art Institute of Chicago. This museum has it all, from ancient artifacts of Egypt and other civilizations, medieval armor and religious art, through Renaissance, Impressionism, Modern, and Contemporary art. It had to be one of the most valuable art collections in the world, and was so massive that even with an entire day, we still couldn’t see every room across multiple buildings and levels.

The number of famous art pieces is too numerable to list, but some of my favorites were: Water Lilies by Monet, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, American Gothic by Grant Wood, and Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. They also had extensive collections on display from Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, and my favorite impressionist: Camille Pissarro.

Just one day in the museum didn’t feel like enough, and I personally can’t wait to visit again.

For dinner, we ate at another famous Italian restaurant called Pizano’s, which according to Oprah had the best thin crust pizza in town. The pizza and pasta were both delicious.