Ah, Fall Harvest

It's officially fall here in Arizona. The leaves don't change colors. The smell of burning leaves does not fill the air. You do not need a jacket yet. What does happen, however, is that the temperature drops to below 100. You can still run around in shorts and sandals, but it's much more comfortable. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to venture down to Apple Annie's Orchard. A lot of Phoenicians have never been there. Primarily because it is about 3 hours away form Phoenix in Wilcox, which is past Tucson. A few years ago, Ben and I ventured down there and he continually asked me if we were there yet. Fortunately, Sam was interested in taking a little road trip and Sterling joined us too.

We left town around 11amish and we were in the car for over 3 hours. We did get a little loopy at one point singing at the top of our lungs to the Violent Femmes, that is Sam and I sang out of the top of our lungs and Sterling was armed with a loudly blaring ipod to drown out our singing.
Pictures of us in the car:



On our way to Wilcox, we continued to see these billboards for "The Thing?" There must have been about 20 of them are so. Our curiosity got the better of us later and we stopped at "The Thing?" on our way back. We made up several stories in our head what "The Thing?" could be.



Finally, we arrived! There was much rejoicing! First things first, we needed to grab some lunch. It was almost 2:30, afterall. We enjoyed our lunches of applewood smoked burgers and relaxed at some picnic tables shaded by asian pear trees. Unfortunately, there were no more asian pears. The season had come and gone without us enjoying a single one from Annie's. We picked apples. Sterling was quite good at picking apples, he has that height that's helpful. I think he quite enjoyed it, wanting to pick more apples than any of us could eat.


We had our fill of apples after consuming some apple crumb pie (that was delicious!) and headed over to the produce and pumpkin area that "Annie" owns. So many sunflowers! When we pulled up, we immediately noticed the sunflowers. They were so beautiful!


We boarded a hayride and drove out to the pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkins.
Sam & Sterling on the hayride:



We went out to the pumpkin patch and marveled at how many pumpkins there were. So many! Erick, Sam's DH, requested that we find the odd-shaped ones for him. We couldn't find many, they were all nearly perfect. They were huge! There were also several green ones, which was cool. They vines are prickly and we weren't prepared for the "workout" that ensued. Sterling picked his perfect pumpkin, Sam picked one for Erick and I grabbed one. Then, we headed over to the produce market. We opted to not pick our own and just grab what was already picked. I got some peppers, sweet corn, acorn squash and green beans for Ben.

We had a full day of picking and were ready to head home. Not before we stopped at "The Thing?". I had conjured up more ideas, since we saw signs saying "don't park within 100 feet of this area". Sam went up to the counter and told the man, "Three for The Thing?, please." It was so funny.



We went up to the door and followed the golden footsteps. Here is some of what we saw:




As you can tell, we saw lots of "things". This guy that put the 3 buildings together had a "thing" for antiques. Lots of interesting things. Now that our curiosity was satisfied, it was time to get back on the road.

About an hour later, we saw the most beautiful sunset. It started out yellowish, then moved on to hues of orange and pink. We contemplated yarn that would incorporate the beauty of the colors that we played witness to.





We had a good time, but I don't know that we will make that drive again. Maybe if we do something in Tucson the day before and spend the night. We were all exhausted when we got home.