Fall

We have had a string of gorgeous October days this week, and today was no exception. It was a bit overcast, yes, but the trees are striking with their coats of red, orange and yellow, and sometimes the clouds on an overcast day are even more interesting than just seeing blue sky above. I headed out around 8:00 for a run on the Snowplug 50k loop. Beautiful along the river with a coating of leaves floating out in the shallows and pooling along the rocks in the quiet stretches of water. My Garmin read 6.17 but Ryan's read something like 6.4 this afternoon. So, who knows? Probably somewhere in the middle, which should be just about perfect :-) Ran at a decent clip for the loop - hard to run an even pace between the first big hill, the singletrack and the dirt roads but easy to run slow in the woods and quickly on the dirt :-) - and added on a bit to get in an even 6.5 miles for the morning. By the time we were clean and ready to go, the sun was shining intermittently through the clouds, and we headed out up Rt. 201 to Rocky Ridge Orchard.

It's a great place to go to apple pick! I stopped first at the bakery to pick up some delicious pumpkin molasses donuts - yum! - and then we headed out to pick apples. We went out to the far edges of the orchard where the trees were laden with fruit. It was lovely out there, looking through the apple trees into the far pastures and the turning trees beyond. On our return to the store, we picked pumpkins and then took a horse-drawn wagon ride through the fields. It was a nice, quintessential fall morning and a lot of fun :-)

Apple picking

Out in the orchard

Gorgeous apples

Happy girlie, climbing for apples

Me and my sweet little girl :-)

How do you like them apples? :-)

Happy on the wagon ride

Hi horsie!

Looking forward to the Snowplug 50k tomorrow!