Holy crap, that last post was a rant and rave session! This one’s different, I promise. Plus, I’ve had over 3 weeks to blow off that steam!
I love the fall season. It’s my favorite time of year. The weather gets a bit crisp, like a ripe apple! It’s relaxing and enjoyable to welcome the changing seasons, but really only when you don’t have small children running and screaming through the moment. I have children, so I can’t just sit out on the back patio for hours and breathe in a cool old fashioned while watching (or imagining, as we do here in San Diego) leaves fall from the trees. Because as soon as my cocktail holding derriere hit the patio furniture, Mushie would already be trouncing through the yard picking, stomping, (or heaven forbid, tasting) dog poopies. (I swear she’s convinced they’re truffles…I digress.)
Sorry, back to the apples. We wanted to return to the Raven Hill apple orchard in Julian, CA that we had first visited way back in 2012. (We missed the apple orchards last year due to a complication called a 9-month old baby.) After perusing the old internet this year, we learned that Raven Hill didn’t exist anymore. But in exactly the same place, there was an orchard called Volcan Valley Apple Farm. (I know. I know. First our favorite orchard was on a hill…now, it’s in a valley…it’s all about perspective, I guess.) We punched the location into the GPS and early Saturday morning, we headed for the hills, er, valley.
Three things I learned while making the one hour and nineteen minute trip on the winding roads up to Julian, California:
- An hour in the car with small children can feel like three.
- Having two people in the car with motion sickness is worse than one. (Worm inherited this from his mother.)
- It wouldn’t be a normal weekend unless someone is crying inconsolably.
Once we arrived at our destination (and the altitude induced hypoxia kicked in), the smiles and laughter began. Worm and mommy got the color back in their faces and the woozy out of their legs. We walked the rows of tasty apples and hauled in three bags worth of the delicious (not to be confused with the genetically modified and tasteless red delicious) apples! Lucky for us, we showed up early in the season. The recent southern California droughts had left some orchards fruitless.
The day was turning out better than it had started, which is never a bad thing…and all without a flask of hard alcohol! I can’t say that it was the finest trip I’ve ever taken with the family, but it was memorable. Just like the landscape, our orchard experience this year had its ups and downs. But, the highest part was that my camera captured a really touching moment of the kids that is probably my finest work to date. I found it absolutely breathtaking (though, it didn’t quite make up for all of the crying and whining that day…).
This image speaks volumes more than my captions ever could.
Gavin – 36; Honeydaddy – 21 (In the muck and mire of day-to-day parenting, I know I forget to open my eyes and experience the present moment. You and your sister are doing your best to keep reminding me to do so. Please don’t give up on me.)
Me vs. Gavin 