Apple picking

When planning this trip, my SIL talked up the places known for fall locations like apple picking and pumpkin patches. Unfortunately, when on my brother's day off he announced we were going apple picking in Michigan, the temperature was in the 80's. Apparently, those temperatures cause the apples to fall off of the trees. There were more apples rotting on the ground then there were on the trees, but we still enjoyed our walk through the orchard.

We collected our bag and made our way down the gravel path to the orchard. Susan had been here before and so she led us. There were honey crisps, red delicious, golden delicious, mutsu, gala, and other types that I'd never heard of before. Apparently, this orchard is known for the honey crisps, but we never saw one on any of the trees. Probably because in the grocery those suckers go for like $8 in Florida.

We picked a variety of apples. Rusty remarked that we should bake an apple pie, and when I tried to explain that baking apples were different than the apples we were putting in our bag he told me I didn't know anything. Ah, glad to see things don't change in the sibling department. Keeping along those lines, I shall post this picture that I didn't notice looked suspicious until I got home:

He isn't really peeing in the corn field, but tee hee. This farm had corn, apples, cherries, grapes, pears, peaches, and pumpkins, and that was just what we could see. We were allowed to wander freely and we did. We didn't pick too many apples since we were really there for the experience, but the ones we did bring home were delicious and very sweet.

We made some purchases in the barn, homemade jellies and salsas, and drank fresh hot cider drawn from a large barrel in the middle of the barn. It was too hot for that, but we were determined to pretend it was fall. This was where we learned that the hot weather was knocking the apples to the ground, and I made the mistake of mentioning I was from Florida and so I got blamed for bringing the high temperatures.

From the orchard, we headed to the lake. We walked along the beach, took pictures, attempted to find rocks to skip, and had a nice early dinner at a pizza place where we discussed our empty nests.

Later that night I made apple crisp with our collected, hand picked apples. It was very sweet, but we had no trouble gobbling it down. A nice end to a lovely day.