Daytrip

Posted in Life @ The Grand

As I may have mentioned before, swimming lessons are not going so well this time around. Although they are not scheduled during Simon’s regular naptime, he falls asleep on the long ride across town almost every week, and waking up to get in a cold pool is, well, not his favorite. This week we planned an afternoon trip to Nebraska City to take in some of the beautiful fall colors and pick up some apples and whatnot. We decided that if the little guy fell asleep on the way to swimming, we would skip (again) and head down early. He did; we did.

We started off at Kimmel Orchard—a place we have been many times. I had only ever been to the main building, where they sell a huge variety of apples and stuff made with apples (salsas, wines, sauces, jams, pies, etc.) and other orchardy stuff (cherry cider, e.g.). I particularly love their apple doughnuts. And while the building has lots to offer productwise, it’s not really what I’d call a rockin’ good time or anything (they did have a live polka band there on Saturday, so that was something).

I had no idea, though, how big the orchard (and vineyard) really is. We saw a sign for hayrack rides to the pumpkin patch and thought, Why not?

The hayrack ride went much more smoothly than the one last year at Jason’s work party (Simon was eight months old and cried the WHOLE time). It was beautiful, and Simon was fascinated with the tractor.

We hopped off to pick apples. This was my idea, one I did not think through very well. I just thought Simon would like pulling them off the tree. We had no bag to collect them, so we just let him grab one that was destined for the ground anyway.

We did enjoy our stroll the rest of the way to the pumpkin patch. Simon picked his way through the pumpkin vines and tested his strength with several pumpkins.

After lunch we made our way to the Lied Lodge. Our plan was to walk down through the woods to the Arbor Day Tree Adventure and see if the kiddo was still awake.

The Tree Adventure was really cool and will definitely be worth going back to spend some real time. We were pretty worn out by that much fresh air already (ha), so our trip was relatively short. (God bless my dear husband for nixing the woodchip part of the trail, which would have added another 3/4 mile to our walk; I wanted to collapse by the time we got back to the car the way it was).